Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Step Three:
In our photo shown in Step One, her skin
looks a bit yellowish, and the whole tone
of the photo looks a bit too warm, so it
definitely needs a white balance adjust-
ment. (
Note:
If you want to follow along
here using this same image, you're welcome
to download it from
www.kelbytraining
.com/books/LR3
.) So, go ahead and choose
Auto from the White Balance pop-up menu
and you'll see how that would look (as
you can see here, her skin actually looks
somewhat better, but the gray background
behind her is blue, and the highlights in
her hair are blue, and well, her skin, while
a little better, is kinda…bluish). The next
three White Balance presets down will all
be warmer (more yellow), with Daylight
being a bit warmer, Cloudy being warmer
still, and Shade being a lot warmer. Go
ahead and choose Cloudy, and you can
see the whole photo is much too warm.
Step Four:
If you choose either of the next two down—
Tung sten or Fluorescent—they 're going to
be way crazy blue, so you don't want either
of those, but Flash (shown here) while not
perfect is at least decent (take a moment
and try each of those, just so you see how
they affect the photo). The last preset isn't
really a preset at all—Custom just means
you're going to create the white balance
manually using the two sliders beneath the
pop-up menu. Now that you know what
these presets look like, here's what I recom-
mend when you're working with your own
images: First, quickly run through all the
presets and see if one of them happens to
be “right on the money” (it happens more
than you might think). If there isn't one
that's right on the money, choose the pre-
set that looks the closest to being right (in
this case, I felt it was the Flash preset, which
isn't nearly as warm or as blue as any of
the others, but the gray background behind
her now looks a tad brownish to me).
Continued
