In the past in the film camera or analog camera, the facility of digital white balance is not available. You had to purchase a specific film for ‘daylight’ for outdoor daytime or probably you needed to purchase a specific studio film for studio photography with tungsten studio light.

In digital camera, digital white balance can control color compensation for different light sources by changing red; green and blue ratio when the image is processed or stored in the digital camera. If your camera has RAW format facility; you can change and edit the digital white balance later in the computer or adjusting color tone; brightness or color saturation easily.

By default, digital camera controls the digital white balance automatically. But if you need to use different digital white balance you can select white balance setting as you wish depends on the current conditions such as ‘daylight’ for landscape photography when the sky is blue or maybe ‘tungsten’ setting for indoor tungsten light and so on. This manual setting is to assure that you can keep the color as original as the object color. The other word is to assure the color compensation is correct.

Deciding RAW format

Even though you can edit the photo image on the computer later but that is not a good habit as the photographer. If you store the photo images in JPEG format during photography, the camera will process the sensor information before storing the images. It means that the digital white balance has been processed with whatever the setting you applied during photography. If you need to process the image later in the computer to change the color balance, you will do it for the second process. And sometimes the result is not satisfactory and ultimately reduces the image quality.

The best thing to do is to choose either controlling the correct digital white balance during photography or selecting the RAW format. The disadvantage of using RAW format is that you need to process it in the computer later when you need to change the format to JPEG. The advantage of using RAW format is that you don’t need to worry of selecting a wrong digital white balance during the photography since you can change it later in the computer.

Digital White balance Manual settings

The auto digital white balance sometimes cannot correctly distinguish between the light color and the intrinsic color of the subjects. The camera always works out to analyze the colors on the subject and normalize it, but when finding intrinsic color of the subject, it often fails to distinguish it from the light color. Besides; the camera also compensates the light condition around the subject that you also want to consider within the frame.

Unfortunately the color that you want to normalize does not exist; because the auto digital white balance sometimes fails to compensate the extreme light such as excessive warm of domestic tungsten, or excessive cold on strong shadow. Therefore; it’ll be better if you select manual digital white balance setting depending on the current conditions. This way you can expect how the camera will respond to the existing condition.

Auto White balance setting

This picture was captured using auto digital white balance with RAW format to allow editing later on the computer. The camera compensated to warmth and makes a combination of reddish and yellowish picture.

Compare to the same picture below but the digital white balance was changed to cloudy type and the result is colder photo with bluish panorama as close as the original condition. Thanks to RAW format that allows you to change digital white balance later in the computer in case you made wrong digital white balance selection.

White balance was changed to Cloudy

Applying a Warmer Color

Some photographers prefer photos with warmth impression instead of cold ones. Landscape or portraits photographs are often processed with the warmth color compared to the cold color that is technically ‘right’. Some methods are usually made to create a warmth atmosphere.

One of the methods is to intentionally select the wrong setting of the digital white balance for the cold lighting. For example, to evoke a warmth sunset, you can select the digital white balance to ‘shade’ or ‘cloudy’. This way you will trick the digital camera to evoke a warmth color balance.

White balance set to Auto

The above picture was captured with auto white balance using RAW format to allow me to change the digital white balance later in the computer to see how the difference among different white balance settings. You cannot change the digital white balance in the computer if you select JPEG format during the capture.

White balance set to Shade

This picture was edited using ‘shade’ white balance. Compare to the first picture (the same picture with auto WB), the color was compensated to a warmth color that evokes red and yellow color with dramatically sunset atmosphere.

You can also utilize a warmth filter with manual setting for the digital white balance instead of auto setting. If the auto setting is used, the camera will compensate the color, and the result is not what you expect. By processing the image in the computer, you can create a warmth color too by adjusting the color balance using image editing tool such as Photoshop. Add the red balance and reduce the blue balance with the same portion, then you will create a warmth color for your photographs.

Auto white balance

This silhouette photograph was captured using auto white balance. Now, the picture is processed in the computer using Adobe Photoshop and applied color balance by adding +30 red and reducing -30 blue. The photo result becomes warmth with red and yellow atmosphere.

Using Photoshop - color balance modified

With Adobe Photoshop, you can play with color balance to create an extreme color effect. For example, to evoke a dramatic moon light effect as in the movie, firstly darken the image for a night effect and then drag the color balance drastically toward blue.

Color balance modified in Photoshop

The moon light is not blue actually but the blue artificial is like at daytime, creates a moon light impression as in the movie. The last three photographs were produced by Yoyon N.

See also:

• Lighting photography
• Rules of thirds in composition techniques
• Exposure techniques in photography