I wasn't totally satisfied with the photos, though; they all had a slight yellow cast. The yellow gave it a nice soft look, but it was also somewhat unnatural. I wanted to correct this, and I knew I probably could since I shot everything in RAW mode, which leaves the photos unprocessed (as opposed to shooting in jpg, which compresses the images as it writes them to the camera's memory card). But I didn't really know how to do it, or even if I could do it at all with iPhoto, which is the only photo management application I have.
So I sent a quick message to my Internet friend Greg Kendall-Ball, who is a professional photographer and has been gracious in the past about giving me pointers. (Seriously, check out his work—it's excellent. Order some prints. Tell him I sent you.) I asked him how to get rid of the yellow tint in my photos, and he replied and advised me that iPhoto does in fact do white balance correction. And it's pretty easy; here's what he said: "On the 'Adjust' panel, next to 'Tint' is an eyedropper. Click that on a spot that should be white." Here's the relevant portion of the Adjust panel in iPhoto. The eyedropper is all the way to the left.
And it's a simple one-click process. There were a lot of white shirts and tablecloths (and a certain white dress, of course) in the photos I took, so it was easy enough to find a "true" white for the software to rely on for its adjustments. Clicking on something that should be white had an instant dramatic effect. Here is one before/after example, a shot of my friend Anna and her son Troy. (I clicked on Troy's shirt to make the adjustment.)
In some ways I like the softness of the poorly balanced image better. I can't decide if this is just bad judgment on my part, or if there's some additional manipulation I should apply to the photo to give it back some of its warm glow. It could also be that the automated correction overdid it and fine-tuning it is the key.
I welcome your comments and advice, especially if you have more of a clue about this kind of thing than I do. Thanks, Greg, for the tip! (And the rest of you: remember to visit his site and check out his work.)
5 comments:
I tend to like warmer pictures too, but I think there are things you can do to have a more balanced, yet still vibrant picture. Unfortunately, I think it does require a bit more processing than iPhoto can do in some cases.
Check out some of the work my friend Steve has done here.
I really like the yellow versions... I think it makes them look out of the ordinary.
Thanks for the plug, Scott.
One note about "warming:" your camera may vary, but I shoot most of my PJ stuff on AWB (Auto White Balance) and then plan to make adjustments later. My camera's default setting, it seems, makes the whites several shades cooler than I would like. It takes the white area and makes it almost a bluish white. While the white may be technically correct, it throws off the whole image. So, I'll usually use the settings I get from the eye-dropper as a starting point, and then nearly always find myself moving the slider to the right, to bring back some of the warmth...other wise my human subjects look creepy and pasty.
One other thing to try would be to convert to B/W (either through the iPhoto preset or just desaturate it), and THEN play with the white balance levels...that can really change the look of an image, too.
Have fun,
GKB
I use Picnik to edit most of my pictures, and it is really great for correcting balance problems (among many other things). If only I could use it for my vertigo.
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