Help with White Balance.

[jwbryson1]

I posted some photos yesterday and was told the white balance was "way off" (skin tones were too orange) and it was suggested that I used auto WB instead. Well, I've never liked using auto WB and here is why. See photos below. The first was shot with auto WB, and the second was shot with cloudy WB. I much prefer number 2 over number 1 which is completely washed out and flat to me. So, I have a couple of questions.

1. If I shoot in auto WB, why are my colors so crappy?
2. If I shoot in auto WB, does it make a difference if I select "Vivid" or "Portrait" or another mode in my D90?
3. Is the answer simply that I need to shoot in RAW (these were shot direct to JPEG) and adjust my WB in PP? I would think that if you carefully select the inputs that you could shoot direct to JPEG with good results.

Thoughts, suggestions are welcome. I thought I understood this and was fairly happy with my results, until I got feedback that suggested otherwise. Thanks.

1. Auto WB - Colors completely washed out, skin tones boring, background trim on house looks antique but is "whiter" in person.

2. Cloudy WB - MUCH better colors, skin tones look better, background more true to the real color.

 

[Big Mike]

If you are going to use a specific WB like cloudy or sunny etc...then you have to adjust it every time your lighting changes. Further to this, if you really want accurate WB, you should set a custom WB for every scene.

Personally, shoot in RAW anyway, so I just leave it in AWB and adjust it when needed.

 

[subscuck]

3. Is the answer simply that I need to shoot in RAW (these were shot direct to JPEG) and adjust my WB in PP? I would think that if you carefully select the inputs that you could shoot direct to JPEG with good results.

This. If you post process, why would you want to shoot in a format (jpeg) that's pretty much uneditable?

I always shoot in AWB and make any adjustments, if necessary, in ACR. The difference I'm seeing in your examples looks more like a difference in exposure. The first looks a bit over to me. There's no exif, so I can't say for sure.

 

[jwbryson1]

I tend to shoot direct to jpeg because I just don't have a lot of time for PP with 2 young children at home.

I guess I need to keep working on this.

Do ya'll like Adobe Premier Elements for PP? I have a PC, not a Mac if that makes a difference.

 

[subscuck]

I think for most people, most of the time (i.e., non pros), Elements is a fine program. I edit on a PC as well and I don't feel I'm missing anything not using a Mac.

 

[KmH]

If you do video and stills, get Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 & Premiere Elements 9 (Win/Mac)

If you only do stills just get Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 (Win/Mac)

 

[Big Mike]

I know some very successful pros who shoot direct to JPEG. Of course, they are more of the 'old school' and are talented & skilled enough to get their photos pretty much how they want them, without much PP.

But I still shake my head at them. Besides storage space/memory, there is few (if any) reasons why JPEG is a better option than RAW.
Why Raw -- Part I

And when I hear someone say that they don't shoot RAW because of time constraints...it tells me that they don't have a good workflow. I'd suggest looking into Adobe Lightroom. It's not a replacement for an image editing program light Photoshop or Elements, but it's a great tool for streamlining your workflow...and it's especially good with RAW files (uses the same RAW processing that Photoshop does).

There is a bit of a learning curve with Lightroom, but if you really put the effort into learning how to use it...it will likely cut down on your processing time dramatically.

You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe.

 

[subscuck]

It's not a replacement for an image editing program light Photoshop or Elements, but it's a great tool for streamlining your workflow...

I agree with all of the above, and especially this ^. Most people on here and other fora buy it as editing software. It isn't. It was conceived and designed and marketed by Adobe as a Data/Workflow management tool with limited editing capability. It's meant to enhance your use of an image editor like CSx or Elements. I just wanted to reinforce this, because it's important to understand this. Get Elements first, then add on Light Room.

 

[jwbryson1]

I know some very successful pros who shoot direct to JPEG. Of course, they are more of the 'old school' and are talented & skilled enough to get their photos pretty much how they want them, without much PP.

But I still shake my head at them. Besides storage space/memory, there is few (if any) reasons why JPEG is a better option than RAW.
Why Raw -- Part I

And when I hear someone say that they don't shoot RAW because of time constraints...it tells me that they don't have a good workflow. I'd suggest looking into Adobe Lightroom. It's not a replacement for an image editing program light Photoshop or Elements, but it's a great tool for streamlining your workflow...and it's especially good with RAW files (uses the same RAW processing that Photoshop does).

There is a bit of a learning curve with Lightroom, but if you really put the effort into learning how to use it...it will likely cut down on your processing time dramatically.

You can download a 30 day trial from Adobe.

@Mike- good information, thanks. I'm also an attorney in Washington, DC, and I usually work 75+ hours per week, so that, combined with a newborn and a 7 year old, my time truly is constrained! =D

I currently own Premier Elements, but it sounds like that SW, combined with Lightroom, might be the perfect combination. I did not realize that LR was not true "editing" software. If you'll bear with me for a moment, what exactly does it mean to be "data/workflow management" software versus editing software?

 

[subscuck]

LR has a filing system that makes Bridge look like a card board box in the hall closet. It also makes things like batch editing a little easier and more efficient. For pros who have to look thru and edit thousands of pics, they need a program to manage their files in a way that makes it quick and easy to find what you're looking for. LR offers these things. You then export your pics to your editing program and do your most critical and final edits there. That's what data/workflow management is, more or less.

EDIT: I should add LR has the same version of ACR as CS, so you can do your RAW edits in LR as well. As long as you're there, and all...

 

[Big Mike]

Lightroom is a different type of software, right at the root level. We are very used to the standard way of handling files. You create or open a file, you work on it, then you save it. If you don't want to overwrite the original, you have to save a copy. If you want to make changes, you open the file again then save or save a copy.

Lightroom works more like a database. You 'import' the images, at which point LR just registers where the image file is located and saves a preview of it. From that point on, anything you do in LR is 'non-destructive'. It doesn't actually touch the original file but saves the changes in a 'side-car' file. So you could open, change, save, open change etc. as many times as you like, the original integrity of the image is always intact. It's called non-destructive editing. When you need a file for something (to send or printing or to the web) you 'output' the images. You can choose many output options and LR applies the edits you made, the options and gives you the files you need.

As far as how it streamlines your workflow, it makes it easy to view and edit/tweak many files at one time. The 'usual' old way of editing RAW files, was to open the RAW file, which brings up a separate program, like Adobe Camera RAW. You then make some of the RAW adjustments and hit 'OK'...the RAW file is then processed and brought into your editing program (Photoshop, elements etc.) You then edit the image further and save-as an image file...JPEG, TIFF, PSD etc. You can do things in batches, but it's not all that intuative.

With LR, you see all the image (you have all sorts of filter & rating options) and you can choose to apply any of your edits, to any or all of the images. So for example, in a studio shoot, with consistent lighting. I just pick one photo and adjust the WB to where I want it. Then because all the shots are in the same lighitng, I just 'sync' the WB on all the photos, and poof...they all have the corrected WB. And you can do that with anything in LR.

Further to that, anything you do in LR can be saved as a 'preset'. In other words, if you always boost the saturation by two points and tweak the tonal curve just so...you can save that as a preset, so that next time, you just click on that preset and it is applied to the selected images. You can also download other people's presets...I have a folder full of them. When I need some creative inspiration, I just browse the presets to get closer to the look I want.

Of course, you can pretty much do all of that in Photoshop/Bridge....but LR just puts it into a nice interface for you, where it's very easy and quick to do.

 

[jwbryson1]

Great info Mike, thanks. Sounds like useful SW with a bit of a learning curve. But for $260 "all in" it's not a bad deal.

I am going to look closely at this and maybe try to 30 day trial version.

Thanks for everybody's help!!

Happy F's Day weekend to all you dads out there.