How to white balance your photos
If you do not white balance the photos you take, there’s a very good chance that your photos will have an unnatural color cast. Most cameras has auto white balance but rarely will it get it right and the worst part is that if you shoot with auto white balance every photo you take will have slightly different casts.
First, always always shoot in RAW. That way the white balance is just a parameter attached to the RAW sensor data and not hardcoded into a jpeg that you will have to white balance and destroy image data. Shooting in RAW also gives you about half a stop more leverage in case you get your exposure wrong.
One of the most important things you can buy is what is called a greycard. The best is Gretag Macbeth, pricey but well worth it. There’s also a cheaper one called QPCard that also works great, either way… get one.
When you shoot your images, turn of auto white balance, shoot RAW and start each new location with a couple snaps of your grey card.
When you get home load up the images in photoshop, and add a curves adjustment layer. Now locate the button with the little eyedropper icon in the curves dialog and set the white, black and grey points by clicking on the corrosponding paches on the greycard and voila, perfect color balance.
If you don’t have a greycard you’t not completely screwed though.
Have a look at my Color Correction by the Numbers article.
