The 'RAW' Truth by David Maynard
White Balance and Workflow.
By David Maynard
By now, many of us have discovered the importance of using a custom white balance when shooting digital. In fact, most pros will tell you that it is vital. In JPEG mode, your camera saves the white balance data within the file, so there is no effective way of changing it after capture. Adjusting for a poor white balance in post edit is ‘hit and miss’ at best, and often leaves the image with an inaccurate and unrealistic color cast despite the attempts at correction.
I know what you’re thinking, “But my expensive state of the art D-SLR has Auto White Balance! Why would I need to custom white balance?” Because even the best cameras give inconsistent color results when using Automatic white balance. This is why the camera makers were sure to include a custom WB function. Hobbyists become frustrated by the poor results they get from using Auto and preset white balance settings, and the working pro simply cannot afford the inconsistency.
There are numerous tools available for creating a custom white balance. A quick web search will yield page after page of them, from gray cards to large pop outs. But for the convenience and accuracy they offer, I use the ExpoDisc™ (Neutral), and ExpoDisc Portrait™ (warm balance) Filters. They are small, easy to use, and offer a consistent, balanced reference frame of both incident and reflected light, which includes all colors in the spectrum equally under an expansive range of color temperatures.
Whatever the method you choose however, a custom white balance is vital to digital photography. This includes RAW files. So now you are thinking, “But Dave, the WB data is saved separately with the RAW file, so I can change it with my RAW conversion software.” Yes, you can. But do you really want to?
Let’s say that you shoot a RAW image in Auto (AWB) mode. The camera gets confused by the multiple color temperatures present, and you end up with a less than desirable color cast. You open the file in your RAW conversion software and start your edit. We already know the “As Shot” or “Shot Settings” option is no good, so we move on. Now we are left with the program’s white balance settings: Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten Light, Fluorescent Light, Flash, Color Temp and Click White Balance.
You can in most cases fiddle about with these settings and get quite close to pleasing results. But it tends to be on a file by file basis. In my experience, using a batch to complete this process is ineffective due to the variance between frames. So this can end up being a time (and profit) consuming endeavor.
In the end, it boils down to managing workflow. The more you get it right in the exposure, the less time you spend editing. The less time you edit, the more time you have to shoot. And isn’t that what we as photographers are all about?
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