White Balance question from newbie-help greatly appreciated

[BES]

Here is my question:


I like my pictures on a "warmer" side and I know you can get it in post-processing but I also know you can get it with use of a warming filter, like 81A or higher. Can I achieve it through adjusting WB instead of buying another filter?


I shoot both in JPEG and RAW. I do not know why because I often lose patience with post-processing and I am not good with PS, I have PS Elements and I frankly suck at it as I never have a chance to learn it properly. Sometimes I open images through Canon DPP and play with it, but then again....not that good...yet. I managed to save only a few "keepers", rest ends up in trash bin. But I do admit I have fun with it at times.


So I thought...how can I minimize my pain while I am learning (I am pretty new to all of this and everything makes me drop my jaw) and use camera settings so that I can get good images which require minimal post processing...


I read the manual and in the section WB correction it says you can adjust WB to your desired effect. But the manual uses "big" words which I do not understand, so I need help...It says "One level of the blue/amber correction is equivalent to 5 mireds of a color temperature conversion filter. (Mired: A measurement unit indicating the density of a color temperature conversion filter.) What in heavens does this translate into when it comes to comparing it to filters? What I am trying to get is an adjustment on my 40D equivalent to 81A or 81B filter. So how would I set my WB to get that? ....If I can...


Sorry if this is too stupid or too basic for this forum...

[powers_brent]

I am not familiar with the filters you mentioned, but if you are shooting outside "cloudy" and "shady" WB give you warmer tones.

[Sinh Nhut Nguyen]

You can use "WB SHIFT/BKT" then shoot test shots.

[Mark Elberson]

<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;"]Bernata,<o></o>


<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;"]I know that when you first get started with digital photography shooting in RAW and processing all of your files can be both intimidating and annoying! It's the best thing you can do (for free) to improve your photography though. Although there is <span style="font-family: Verdana;"]NOalternative for properly capturingthe image in the camera, shooting in RAWgives you <span style="font-family: Verdana;"]SO much more control to "fix" exposure, color balance, contrast, blown highlights, lost shadows, etc. I personally find DPP to be a terrific tool for editing and processing RAW files.


<span style="font-size: 9pt; color: black; font-family: Verdana;"]To specifically answer your question about color balance and appreciating "warmer" images...if you shoot in RAW you can adjust the color balance in DPP. You can do it in several ways too. All of the different White Balance settings that you see in the camera (Auto, Shade, Tungsten, etc) are available in DPP. What else is available is a color temperature (in Kelvin) slider. I love this tool! You can set the color temperature anywhere from 2,500K - 10,000K. When doing portraiture, I often like a slightly "warm" look too and this is where I'll play with the color temperature until I get the look I like. This is way easier and more controlled than using any filter too!

[Chuck Lee]

There is never a too-basic question. Stupid is when you don't ask.


I think it's great that you are shooting in the combined format of raw+jpeg. If you have the hard drive/storage space I would for now save all your well composed raws because you will have the opportunity to come back to them at a later date.


Some people are not as technically minded and raw processing and even photoshop can seem a bit daunting. My wife is one such person. She is getting better as she works with it but it is a slow process. God Bless her for trying. She uses google's Picasa3 and absolutely loves it. Picasa is free and can be downloaded from http://picasa.google.com/. One word of warning. Picasa is a photo organizer first and an image editor second. It's way of handling files is very different from anything I've ever dealt with from a PC windows point of view. For a file control freak like me it can get rather frustrating. Be sure that you organize your photos when loading them onto your computer so that you can control where they're stored. Picasa does the rest. It's interface is very well done and it's photo adjustment tools are very powerful. If you want to adjust the color temperature of a jpeg it has a color picker to pick neutral greys/whites or you can just slide the slider to adjust warmer or cooler. There is an online community of users that are more than willing to answer any of your questions.


Two more important things to remember about Picasa. 1) It never alters the original raw or jpeg. That's called non-destructive editing. 2) You have to export a new jpeg to have an actual file with edits. If you grabbed the original from disk it will not reflect those edits you see in the Picasa interface. Those edits are held in a special file which resides in the directory with the photos.


Remember these few things and Picasa should work well for you.


Hope this helps,


Chuck