Exercise 13: Managing Colour

This exercise concentrates on white balance and is an extension of Exercise 12. The idea was to 'correct' colour cast in three images using your preferred software (in my case Lightroom 3).


I took 3 images which I felt had a slight colour cast, two with known grey surfaces, and adjusted them using the 'W' setting and eye-dropper in Lightroom, but having first set their black and white points. Whilst this did not make a dramatic difference to the image in any of the examples, there were significant changes/improvements. 


NB. For the purposes of this exercise, no other adjustments (contrast, clarity, tone curve etc) within Lightroom were made to the images so that they are not what I would consider as a 'finished product'.

Although the image above seems ok, the trousers are a known grey colour and so using these to set the WB was helpful and resulted in a slightly less yellow tint below.

In the next example, there is another grey surface, although in this case it is considerably larger.

As in the first pair of images, the WB correction, here using the rear sail of the ship as the 'neutral target', results in a slightly cooler image.

Finally, an image where changing the WB led to a warmer image after using the lower part of the balcony window on the extreme edge of the frame.

The adjusted image is preferable, in my view, as it better reflects (no pun intended!) the warm, sunny day.