Easy way to find Grey for White Balance

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Siberdib

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Richard
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I seem to find it increasingly hard to find neutral grey in RAW. Most of the time it is guess work and this results in varied results.

Can anyone share any techniques they use to find grey when using RAW? The more quicker and simply the better.

Thanks
 
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Get yourself a grey card,then include it in the shots you are taking(not all of em,just a couple) then when editing the photo's in L/R or PS just click the grey card for the correct white balance..;)
 
That was what I was thinking but that is not really viable when doing sports photography. It ideally needs to be something for post processing, while using AWB while shooting.
 
You could try selecting a fixed WB , say daylight. Then photograph a grey card or similar neutral object, at the event, before it starts and then use this to get the colour balance you like and apply this to all the images.
 
There was a digital grey card by a guy called stringer (if I remember rightly) it worked as an action and did a fair job, don't know if it's still about.
 
What sort of sports are you shooting? You can often find something that is either neutral, or you know is a consistent colour, and work from that. Remember for white balance it doesn't really need to be grey, only neutral (unless you are going to numerical perfection).
 
Some people use the inside of a LowePro bag to set the wb from as it's allegedly pretty near to 18% grey. :shrug:
 
To correct white balance you do not need just a grey - Any neutral colour should do. Be that grey white or black.

Basically any colour where RGB colours should be the same value.
 
Kerioak said:
I think it was Starrider who posted a link to this site recently and I think the answer to your question might be in this tutorial ( http://www.jhpvideotutorials.com/2011/01/12/photoshop-cs5-using-curves-color-correction-part-1/ ) or part 2, sure I saw finding a true neutral grey in a picture in one of them
Click to expand...
:thumbs:

Part Two shows a method using Photoshop http://www.jhpvideotutorials.com/2011/01/12/photoshop-cs5-using-curves-color-correction-part-2/

Not seen it done this way before!

As I mainly shoot people I tend to use the white of the eye unless there's another obvious point.

Andy
 
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That was exactly what I was looking for with that video. Have used it in a few of my images that I felt weren't quite right and they have turned out a treat.

Thanks a lot.
 
THe video I'm not sure finds a neatral grey for colour balance though. It finds an actual neutral grey area - but what if that area should be green?

Likewise if you have a colour cast the area you want as neutral grey may be warmer or colder..... So finding the neutral grey area (as the video shows) does not assist for colour balance.

In your image that needs balanced, you can use any neatral area be it white, grey or black. Basically any neutral area.

Cheers
JD
 
Found it .....if you go to www.atncentral.com and under the Editing and Highlight Recovery Tool Section it is No 1 in that list and its a Digital Grey Card

Dave
 
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