How to; Fix Your White Balance

Okay, so the first thing most people start doing when they are trying to improve their photography skills is to turn the flash off at every possible instance, which is completely the right thing to do but can also create a lot of white balance issues.

If you are taking images indoors,with the room light on, you can get pictures where your subject's skin is orange. Today we're going to be discussing how to remove an orange cast from your image and thus make your subjects skin a more normal color.

This is an image that's SOOC (straight out of camera) and it is of a wee man named Grayson.

Open the image in photoshop. At the top of the screen select "Image" from the drop down menu select "Adjustments" and then "Photo Filter" .

This window should appear. You'll notice that this image is a bit "warmer" (more orange or gold toned) then the previous image. That's because the top filter is selected and the effect is automatically shown on your image.

Since we want to remove the excess orange we'll need a cooling filter. There are three cooling filter options, for this image the cooling filter 82 works best. You'll note that the image now looks quite blue.

It is always better for an image to be warmer rather then cooler. Think about it; healthy humans sometimes have a tan glow, and warm images in the proper setting (sunsets, sun flair) are very appealing. However blueish skin generally denotes oxygen deprivation or coldness, so you'll want to be careful about fixing your images. Less is more! Slide the density slider to the point where the skin looks corrected.

That's it! You're done with the white balance correction! Easy right?

Here is the complete edit on the image.

Pray for Amy!

One of my sister's dearest friends, (and former roommate) came to visit the other week. Amy was an Art/Design major at Baylor and is now going to use her talents to influence people for Christ in Dresden, Germany. Amy is leaving in January, and will be in Germany for two years working with the International Mission Board. Pretty awesome, right? Anyway, Amy needed prayer cards made for people to hang on their refrigerators, and we thought we'd get that out of the way when she visited.

It's an interesting thing, photographing another photographer and it's an even weirder thing to edit images of another photographer while they watch! Everyone has their own way of editing, mine is soft, smooth colors and the liberal use of actions and curves. Amy has a different way of editing (which is probably technically better too, since she has had classes in editing) and she likes edgier, higher contrast images. It was fun, I'd edit an image one way and Amy would edit another in a totally different direction. I definitely learned some new techniques!

This is my play on this image...

..and this is Amy's play on it (and the finished card.) I edited her last name out of this for privacy on this blog, the card generally doesn't have the white edit bar in it.

It was interesting shooting for the express purpose of a card, because all the images needed to be asymmetrical to allow for writing on one half!

After the card was finished, we headed to Downtown Bryan to try for some more creative shots.

This is my play on this image...

..and this is my roommate Beth's play on it.