Fixing Wrong Color Balance.

[Bynx]

Does anyone know a quick fix for pictures shot with wrong color balance. I wanted a warm look to my pics so I used the Shade setting while the light source was incadescent giving the pic a warm reddish color to otherwise white walls. Big mistake. Now Id like the pics color corrected to the proper setting. Im having trouble in Photoshop and wondered if there was a software that would make automatic corrections.

[mipo]

Hi,
Depends if the picture format is Raw or JPG.
With Raw the white balance can be changed from one end to the other with no problems & no quality loss. Using software like, Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw & Nikon NX for Nikon's

With JPG Adobe Photoshop can do a small range of White Balance adjusments but with a loss in quality. May be some other softwares can also do it.

[Alan T]

Originally Posted by Bynx

Does anyone know a quick fix for pictures shot with wrong color balance...Im having trouble in Photoshop and wondered if there was a software that would make automatic corrections.

Well, I managed this on mother-in-law's shot, the other night, of my wife & pals, on my son's cast-off (2005) Sanyo S4. (1/30s, f3.1, ISO200, full auto, flash fired, but obviously didn't do much).

This was using "Enhance Photo>Automatic Colour Balance" twiddled to 7800K in Pain Shop Pro v7.04 (they're now on v11). Surely PhotoSlop must be able to do better?

[dwig]

Originally Posted by Alan T

...
This was using "Enhance Photo>Automatic Colour Balance" twiddled to 7800K in Pain Shop Pro v7.04 (they're now on v11). Surely PhotoSlop must be able to do better?

I don't know that PS can do better, but it works as well.

I tried PS/CS4 on the lefthand image and its Image/Auto Color option did a good job, though a bit more conservative. I also tried using Curves (Image/Adjustments/Curves or Layers/New Adjustment Layer/Curves) and using the Highlight eyedropper to sample from the man's white beard. This worked well though the resulting image was a bit oversaturated. A second Adjustment (or Adjustment Layer) using Vibrance and reducing Saturation a bit finished it off well.

[Bynx]

Thanks for your help. I found a PS plugin which corrects Color Balance. I tried it out and it is simple to use but not 100%. By the way, the problem I have is very similar to your exampe Alan. I shot in shade instead of incandescent. This produced the orangish red look.