Elements WB Adjustment

Sometimes you are just stuck with an image that you may have taken in a multi-light environment. Something such as Florescent with Tungsten spot and sunlight in a window. All of which have a different color temperature. There are three methods to correct white balance; In camera prior to capture, during capture and post production. Ok so the last two are a 1-2 punch. The first is either knowing the controlled lighting condition and setting the white balance on the camera accordingly or using a device such as Expoimaging’s ExpoDisk to set a custom white balance. The second is to use a target card such as I have in this tutorial. This does require adjustment during post production. If you are using Lightroom 2 or ACR 5.X you have tha ability to use the white balance eye dropper and tick the target to set the color temperature. Element users are not so lucky.

This first image is clearly taken with the wrong white balance set in the camera. Using a levels adjustment in Elements will reset not only the color temperature but also the brightness of the image. Notice in the above screen capture the histogram. There is a good spread across the luminance range indicating a good exposure. Notice also the histogram is very smooth in its shape.

BLACK SET POINT

By clicking on the left (black) eye dropper below the Auto button tells the levels dialog that when clicked on the image to set that pixel temperature to black or zone one. Clicking the eye dropper on the black section of the target will set the black point. Note the shape of the histogram not only changes but it starts to break up. This is because Photoshop or Elements has to interpret data that is not there. This is not a bad thing necessarily but it is something to be aware of.

WHITE SET POINT

Now click on the right or white eye dropper and click on the white section of the target. This now sets the white point for the image. Again note the change in histogram change and fragmentation.

MID TONE SET POINT

Finally click on the center or gray eye dropper and click on the gray section of the target. This now sets the mid-tone point for the image. Once again note the change in histogram change and fragmentation.

The image should now not only be corrected for white balance but correct exposure. Now this is more of a surgical procedure and may not give you the fuzzy feeling of a nice image. That is the artistic aspect of photography that you can then experiment with.

Below is a screenshot of the ACR white balance adjustment to the same RAW file just to show what it’s result produced. I took the photo with the white balance set to Tungsten but used a flash. In ACR selecting Flash in the White Balance drop down will correct the white balance of the image. So why does the ACR image look different that the Levels version above?

Remember earlier I said the levels adjustment does two things. That’s right, in ACR there has been no exposure adjustment. This can be done using the exposure slider but is much more subjective in its use.

Obviously it is best to hit the white balance correctly in camera but sometimes that just isn’t possible, even with auto white balance. What you have here is just another tool in your toolbox.

Take care and I’ll cya tomorrow… Doug