Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
The Second Point:
Adjust the White Balance
It was a very cloudy day outside when
I took this shot, so I had my camera's
white balance set to Cloudy. It eventually
started raining, so we ducked inside a
nearby coffee shop, and while waiting for
our coffee to arrive, I looked up at the
ceiling and saw this clock that looked kind
of out of place in a coffee shop in Bruges,
Belgium, so I grabbed a quick shot of it.
My white balance was still set on Cloudy—
that's why the shot looks so orange/yellow,
but that's easily fixed in one of three ways
in the Basic panel (covered on page 124):
(1) tr y one of the built-in White Balance
presets (Tungsten seems to look the best
for this photo), (2) drag the Temp slider
toward blue until the yellow color goes
away, or (3) do what I did here, and grab
the White Balance Selector tool, click it
on something you think is supposed to
be light gray (I clicked on the wall to the
right of the clock here), and the white
balance is fixed.
The Third Point:
Adjust the Overall Exposure
The third point of the 7-Point System
is about adjusting the overall exposure
using the Basic panel's Exposure, Recovery,
Brightness, Fill Light, and Blacks (shadows)
sliders. The photo looks kind of dark, so
we'll start by dragging the Exposure slider
to the right, so the whole image is brighter
(as shown here). If you look in the top-right
corner of the histogram, you can see that
we have a clipping warning (see page 135),
and if you click on it, you'll see that what's
clipping is the lights in the ceiling behind
the clock. The background's out-of-focus,
and this isn't an area of important detail,
so I wouldn't sweat trying to fix it (you
can drag the Recovery slider to the right
a bit, but you'll see that it's too blown
out to be fixed. Luckily for us, like I said,
it's not an area of important detail).
Continued
