I have a hard time telling if the snow is white or not. Not only in this image but in most images I take in the winter (unless I go black and white). Is there a trick for making the snow white when it comes to white balance?
I took this one last week. The only thing I did in post was I darkened the blacks in LR. Everything else is as originally shot. Taken from the backyard blind with the Canon 7D and the 100-400mm 5.6 @ 250mm on a tripod. (The dark area in the top right is an out of focus tree). As always C&C welcome.
Manual Exposure - 1/750
White Balance - Daylight
ISO - 400
F 5.6
Hi Dave, in LR5, I'd click on the eye dropper and then get the dropper hovering over the white part of your image and read the R, G, and B. For pure white the 3 values should be the same. Just for kick, I imported your image into LR5 and found the white BG has a blue cast, so I warmed up the temp by +7. On a RAW file, you should have the color temp. There might be other ways of doing this, but this is what i do. Here is a RP. Loi
Now that you said it, it does have a blue tint to it (I don't see blues to well). I will try playing around in light room using your recommendations. Thanks Loi.
David, this is a nice shot. I think it's a female downy if I'm not mistaken. Loi is correct, I could see a blue cast in the original post. I notice it most in the upper right corner, has almost a light purple color in the lightest parts I notice it's gone in Loi's version. Sometimes the blue cast is so light it is hard to see and Loi is right again, when in doubt check your numbers.
Very nice play of a B/W bird against white snow, with a colored branch for a perch. It looks sharp with good tonalities. Took me a while to see the blue cast.
For anyone confused by the nomenclature above, there is a white eyedropper in PS (in Curves or Levels) and it will blast everything whose values are above where you click to pure white. (Click on a mid-tone to see it.) If you're sure you are in the brightest area of the image and you want it to be pure white, OK.
But the Color Sampler eyedropper in LR/ACR is what Loi referred to above. Hover it over the image and look at the numbers under the histogram. (Must be similar in ACR but I so much prefer the LR raw conversion interface that never use it.)
To see the whitest area, in LR/ACR, hold down Alt/Option while moving the Whites slider, or in PS make a Levels or Curves layer and hold down Alt/Opt while moving the right hand slider. Click there to see any color imbalance.
Nice image, nice job by Loi. More on the WHITEs in a second. My only problem with the image is that I'd love to see the very bottom of the perch: "If an object is worth including in the frame be sure to include the whole thing and give it a small border.
On to the WHITEs. Yes, the RBG #s are there in all conversion engines. With DPP I began using Click White Balance on lots of my Japan images that had lots of snow. For the most part it worked great. Another solution to get rid of the BLUE casts is hit Control A (select all), Control J to put that on its own layer, and then Control U--Hue/Saturation on a Layer. Now go to the BLUE channel and increase the SAT to 100 to see that there really is BLUE where you think there is. If you were right, reduce the BLUE SAT. I sometimes go all the way to the left on that.... Then add a Regular Layer Mask and paint the BLUE back into the rest of the image if needed.....
There are many other ways to work on color casts and color balancing including one of my faves: Average Blur Color Balancing. Several of them are detailed in Digital Basics. Digital Basics is an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. It includes my complete digital workflow, dozens of great Photoshop tips, the use of Contrast Masks, several different ways of expanding canvas, color balance tips, several ways of eliminated color casts, all of my time-saving Keyboard Shortcuts, the basics of Quick Masking, Layer Masking, and NIK Color Efex Pro, my killer image clean-up techniques, Digital Eye Doctor, and lots more.
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Instead of duplicating a layer and doing Hue-Sat (or any adjustment) directly on it, it's more flexible to make an adjustment layer -- it can be masked the same way (except the mask is already there, no need to add one), and the adjustment can be tweaked non-destructively later if needed. It also only increases file size by a very small amount compared to a duplicate layer, which increases it by the same amount as the size of the original BG layer.
Getting the snow white - Downy Woodpecker
