Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
This is the first version of Camera Raw that lets us paint with white balance, and of
all the new things added to Camera Raw, believe it or not, this is one you'll probably
wind up using the most. It's pretty common to have a natural light photo where part
of the photo is in shadows, which usually means the parts in daylight have one color,
and the parts in shadows are usually bluish (especially if you use Auto White Balance,
which most of us do, because it works pretty well for most situations). Here's how to
paint with white balance to make all the color in your image consistent:
Step One:
Here's a location portrait, where our
subject has a nice warm skin tone (par-
tially because I put an orange gel over
the off-camera flash), but take a look at
the background behind her—the street
and buildings are in the shade and that
makes them look blue (like it was taken at
dawn), even though it was taken at sunset.
If I try to warm up the white balance, she
is going to turn really yellow. Luckily, now
we can adjust the white balance in just
one area.
Step Two:
Get the Adjustment Brush
(K)
, click on
the + (plus sign) button to the right of
Temperature (this reset s all the other
sliders to 0 and sets the Temperature to
+25), and star t painting over these bluish
background areas (as shown here). Once
you've painted over them, you can ad-
just the Temperature slider (drag to the
right to warm up the color and make this
area less blue, as I did here, or to the left
if the default setting of +25 makes things
too warm). This is the beauty of using
the Adjustment Brush for this—once
you paint over the bluish area, you can
“dial in” jus t t he r ight amount of w hite
balance correction by dragging the slider
after you've painted. Now the street looks
more neutral, and I also painted over the
sky a bit to make it even more “sunsetty”
(I know—that's not really a word). I also
decreased the Highlights a bit to finish
it up.
