blue pictures :(

[bolty]

I was down in new york city for a few days last weekend, taking in the sights and snapping alot of pictures with my newly acquired T2i. What I didnt realize till after the trip was that the white balance was not set to auto. I think it was on "fluorescent" so most of my outdoor shots have a real bad blue tint to them.

Is there an easy way to correct them all in a batch??

[immiketoo]

What program are you using. Pretty much all photo editing software allows for batch changes.

[scollins]

If you shot in RAW, it should be no problem to change the white balance if you have Lightroom, Photoshop or similar. Elements may do it, but I don't have Elements, so I can't comment on that.

I think you can still change the white balance if all you shot was JPEG, but I think it is a little harder. I shoot in RAW+JPEG on my Nikon. I look at the JPEGs to determine if composition and focus are good enough to keep the shot. I find it much faster to review my pictures on my computer this way vs. opening every single RAW file.

If I keep the picture, then I'll use the RAW file for any corrections.

[bolty]

I did not shoot in raw.

My photo editing has been limited to gimp and image magick. I have been fooling around with some shots but Iam not finding it too easy. A painful lesson learned - shoot in raw.

[immiketoo]

Originally Posted by bolty

I did not shoot in raw.

My photo editing has been limited to gimp and image magick. I have been fooling around with some shots but Iam not finding it too easy. A painful lesson learned - shoot in raw.

Lesson learned: Check your white balance. Everyone makes these kind of mistakes. Don't worry about it. Get a decent photo editing program. Post up one of your pictures and let us have a crack at it.

[bolty]

Here are a few of the bluer shots. Click for larger size.

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

View post on imgur.com

And this one is very common to my shots, overly dark dark areas, and washed out hazy light areas. What am I doing wrong?

View post on imgur.com

Thanks again for all the help and tips.

[bosstones]

I love these! No offense. Wrong WB settings are annoying as hell. I just like comparing my pchop'ing to that of others. It's also interesting to see the differences in preference.

I only recently started shooting in RAW, but it is very easy to correct for in correct WB with them. That aside, are you able to make a 'Curves' adjustment in any of the programs you use? Gimp should have an adjustment for that. Playing around with the blue channel in the Curves adjustment window will be your friend here....especially for the midranges.

Here's a quick attempt from me. Click on the resized images to see the full sized image. I did not sharpen the full sized images at all. Looks like a tad bit too much yellow in my 1st attempt, but oh well. I had blinders on getting the blues out.

Before:


After:


The bulk of what I did was a curves adjustment. However, here is what I did:

1. ever so slight exposure adjustment.
2. curves adjustment (this is what did the bulk of the work).
2. tiny shadow adjustment (because I'm addicted to it).
3. slight tweak to levels.
4. saturation (I tweaked it per color channel so the blues didn't come back overpowering).

The shadow and level tweaks were mainly for contrast and getting a little added detail. Critique is welcome.

edit:
tried another one real quick...

Before:


After:

[immiketoo]

Jeff, those look pretty good for a quickie. OP, If you use a mac, you can easily adjust them iPhoto. In this one, I was able to adjust the underexposed foreground and the overexposed clouds/sky. I also changed the hue to eliminate a lot of the blue from where it didn't belong. This is easily done in other programs as well. Sorry, I don't know how to make links to the bigger pics.

[eVitO]

Originally Posted by bolty

Here are a few of the bluer shots. Click for larger size.



And this one is very common to my shots, overly dark dark areas, and washed out hazy light areas. What am I doing wrong?



Thanks again for all the help and tips.

polarizer filter

You can pick one up at almost any camera store for around $40.

[bosstones]

Originally Posted by eVitO

polarizer filter

You can pick one up at almost any camera store for around $40.

circular or linear? I'm sure that question will come up.

[eVitO]

Originally Posted by bosstones

circular or linear? I'm sure that question will come up.

I have a circular. It's really helpful, almost never have to post-process.

[Joonsup]

i don't want to start a new thread so i'll ask my question here since I googled polorized filter and saw an article that talked about the sunny 16 rule.

if you are in aperture priority mode, is there a way that you can still manually control the shutter speed? I don't have my camera with me right now and I can't recall. I know that I can adjust the "exposure" level to -2 -1 0 1 2 but I think that's different from the shutter speed.

[bosstones]

In aperature priority, the camera picks the shutter speed. In program mode, some cameras let you choose between different aperature and shutter speed combinations but the aperature and shutter speeds are chosen by the camera....you only choose the combo.

[bluespeed117]

unfortunately you were shooting in the tungsten white balance. Sunlight is very blue and that blue needs to be balanced out by orange. If you wanna check it out, go outside and close your eyes and block out any sunlight for a little while. Once you open your eyes, you will see that everything seems to look a lot bluer but you will see that change.
Our eyes have a built in a sort of auto white balance. The sunlight setting puts an orange filter on to equalize the color so it looks natural (this is what our eyes do, they cut the blue down so the color is corrected). When shooting under a tungsten setting, the colors are reversed. If you want to fix these photos, its a lot easier than you might think. Put an orange color overlay on the image to balance the color out. Change the opacity of that overlay to tune in the right color balance.

[ichiban]

LR 3, batch edits like that are easy.

[hipnotic]

change the settings

[AllydNYC]

Originally Posted by josh06lau

change the settings

[dcstep]

Shooting in RAW not only will give you complete WB flexibility, but it'll give you more dynamic range, particularly if you "Expose Right". That means expose to the right of the histogram. Many of those images were in bright sunlight, but you still might have exposed them at +1/3EV to bring out more shadow detail. The jpeg will look too bright, but when you process you pull the brightness level down to the correct level.

Software like LR or DxO's Optics Pro allows you to pull out shadow detail with the click of a button. Also, you can correct for those geometric distortions when you shoot buildings with the sensor not perpendicular to the buildings. Some like those tilting in distortions, but I tend to remove them from my building images. It's easy to fix, even with Elements.

Don't atomatically jump to the polarizer. If the sun is behind you, then the sky will generally stay blue without a polarizing filter. You might consider keeping a UV filter on to reduce haze. If the sun is across your subject or somewhat behind it, then you'll get that wash out. Shooting in the golden hours, late and early in the day will minimize the wash out, but always be aware of the sun's position relative to your subject.

You're off to a great start. You've got a great eye for balance and composition.

Dave

[bosstones]

Originally Posted by dcstep

Shooting in RAW not only will give you complete WB flexibility, but it'll give you more dynamic range, particularly if you "Expose Right". That means expose to the right of the histogram. Many of those images were in bright sunlight, but you still might have exposed them at +1/3EV to bring out more shadow detail. The jpeg will look too bright, but when you process you pull the brightness level down to the correct level.

Software like LR or DxO's Optics Pro allows you to pull out shadow detail with the click of a button. Also, you can correct for those geometric distortions when you shoot buildings with the sensor not perpendicular to the buildings. Some like those tilting in distortions, but I tend to remove them from my building images. It's easy to fix, even with Elements.

Don't atomatically jump to the polarizer. If the sun is behind you, then the sky will generally stay blue without a polarizing filter. You might consider keeping a UV filter on to reduce haze. If the sun is across your subject or somewhat behind it, then you'll get that wash out. Shooting in the golden hours, late and early in the day will minimize the wash out, but always be aware of the sun's position relative to your subject.

You're off to a great start. You've got a great eye for balance and composition.

Dave

^ what Dave said.

Also...I always keep a UV filter on all my lenses. If nothing else, I'd rather have it get scratched accidentally than the lens itself.