A bright, low September sun combined with the beginning of autumn foliage was something I have wanted to photograph for some time. Here in the UK, we had an Indian Summer over the last week or so. The Japanese Garden, Tatton Park, England
![alienskin exposure 7 no white balance alienskin exposure 7 no white balance](https://fujilove.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Image8.jpg)
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If you use a cell phone camera often, be prepared to change white balance often if you want to capture the as-shot light ambience. If you use a cell phone camera, you will typically always end up with an image that is too blue under daylight, and too yellow at night. I chose to illustrate this blog post using a cell phone rather than my usual DSLR for a good reason: I have never used a cell phone camera that didn’t get auto white balance right under any outdoor condition.Don’t add it to the subject’s skin, as clarity has the ability to age the appearance of a person’s face. If you do this, add it to foliage, clothing, hair and eyes only. In some of the photos, I also added a small amount of clarity.Check the white balance first: it is a far easier setting to alter as there is only one slider. Some photographers don’t realize that the issue is to do with white balance, and instead try to fix the issue using more complex color correction (HSB sliders, etc). Although this is desirable when you are shooting indoors (such as when you want to remove the blue/yellow cast caused by fluorescent/incandescent indoor lighting), it is rarely what you want when shooting outdoors. If you leave the camera on auto white balance, the camera tries to remove the cast caused by the colored light. Here’s some more photos post processed using the same white balance technique (all taken within 10 minutes of the initial photo). The hat is now grey, but that is kind of beside the point: I now have the golden sunlight and autumn foliage as they were on the day! Finally, I slightly increased exposure.Īnd here’s the resulting final image. I also tinted the image towards magenta via the tint slider. White balance/Tint sliders as-shot (top) and after processing (bottom)įor this photo, I used Lightroom’s White Balance Selector tool (keyboard shortcut, W), clicking on the hat. Simply set the white balance towards a warmer yellow until the overall image looks right.Use an image area that you know is neutral (such as the grey hat in this case) to set white balance.‘Sunset’ or ‘Cloudy’ usually does the trick, with ‘Sunset’ being the more extreme. Set the white balance away from ‘auto’.The camera is not clever enough to know that you want that cast. Yet the photo captures none of this!Ĭamera auto white balance is fooled by the autumn sun and will set the white balance towards blue to compensate for the yellow cast the sun would otherwise create.
![alienskin exposure 7 no white balance alienskin exposure 7 no white balance](https://www.fundydesigner.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Exposure-6-021.png)
The light was from a perfect low autumn sun, setting off the red and yellow of the leaves. This is as-shot, via a cell phone (HTC Desire HD) during a walk through a wood, just before sunset, October 2012. Original image as-shot (HTC Desire HD camera phone) The fix is to manually change the white balance. This is because auto white balance is fooled by autumn sunlight, and will choose a colder (blue) white balance. When taking photographs of autumn/fall foliage, you may find that your camera doesn’t capture the reds, browns and yellows as you saw them.
![alienskin exposure 7 no white balance alienskin exposure 7 no white balance](https://3.img-dpreview.com/files/p/E~TS590x0~articles/1503571371/exposure-x5-hero.jpeg)
When taking photos that rely on naturally colored light, you need to either manually set white balance before you take the shot, or change white balance later in post processing.