Correcting White Balance

[Tippyz]

Went for a short photowalk today, and had forgotten that I had set my White Balance setting a few days earlier to incandescent. As a result, all of the pictures I took today in the nice sunlight all have a shade of blue (see attached image).

Lesson learned: Always, always, always check the settings of the camera before a session.

However, I am hoping this is a chance to make lemonaid out of these lemons, and learn some basics in Post Processing to see if I can recover any of these photos. What settings or adjustments can I make either in Adobe Elements (Windows) or GIMP (Linux)? What articles or documents would you suggest I read up on?

[kirbinster]

Well if you shot raw its not an issue, as you can set whitebalance to anything after the fact. IF you shot jpeg well you can change it some, but you don't have the full capability as if you shot raw.

[Tippyz]

It was shot in JPG. (probably another lesson there, eh?)

[OsmosisStudios]

You can always use a layer mask.

[teaking]

Quick fix is to use the levels tool in either gimp or photoshop and set the white and black points and then the grey/neutral point which will fix some colour casts.

The more complicated way is here on this post: Best White Balance Correction?

For detailed tutorials you can type in google or you tube, "colour correction with gimp" or "removing colour casts with gimp". Hope you manage to remove those colour casts.

[JeffSmith]

Hi Tippyz, having made the reverse mistake many times, ie, not setting the correct WB, I've found and easy way to do it with jpegs, in fact Photoshop has a function for it.

Load pic and then >Image >Adjustments >Colour Balance.

As your pic has a blue hue, simply add yellow until you get the balance you require. Easy Peasy :-)
I spent arounf 10 seconds on this adjustment as I don't know the result you want to achieve, this is just a quick demo.

Have fun and please post your final image


BEFORE


And After...

[kencaleno]

As you shot in jpeg, it's very simple to correct white balance:

Hover your mouse over a pure grey area on your image
Use the info palette and note down the red green and blue values of the grey area
average out the greys (r+g+b/3)
Open a curves adjustment layer and select the red channel
click anywhere on the curve line and then enter the original red value into the input box
Enter averaged value in the output box
Repeat last two steps for the green and blue channels
Click ok and you're done

Regards, Ken

[Tippyz]

Thanks for the hints everybody! I will play around with this over the next couple of days, and upload my corrected photo along with the steps I took to achieve it.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by kencaleno

As you shot in jpeg, it's very simple to correct white balance:

Hover your mouse over a pure grey area on your image
Use the info palette and note down the red green and blue values of the grey area
average out the greys (r+g+b/3)
Open a curves adjustment layer and select the red channel
click anywhere on the curve line and then enter the original red value into the input box
Enter averaged value in the output box
Repeat last two steps for the green and blue channels
Click ok and you're done

Regards, Ken

Far too much magenta/red in your version, Ken.

[GadgetRick]

This brings up a question I've been asking myself (with no concrete answer). I shoot RAW so, I was figuring, shoot pretty much everything with Auto WB (today's DSLRs seem very good at this) and make sure your WB is good during post processing. Many times I use a different WB or custom white balance than I should because I like the color I get from one WB over another.

I don't see any harm in this but I really don't know. Anyone care to chime in?