G7, white balance not corrected

G7, white balance corrected in Photoshop

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Open any picture you like to adjust in the full or standard editor and not in the quick editor. The reason for that is, in the full editor one can work with layers.

What is a layer?

Think of a layer as a transparent sheet placed on top of the original picture. We can paint this layer a color, write on it, basically anything we want without effecting or damaging the original layer or picture.

At the right bottom of the screen you will see the layers pallet. When only the picture is open, then you will see the picture in the layers pallet. The picture is now on its bottom or base layer.

In this step you should make a duplicate the original picture. This can be done two ways, first place the cursor on the original layer in the layers pallet. Right click and select duplicate layer on the pull down menu. Next a option box will open asking you to give the new layer a name. You can name it anything or leave it as is and press OK.

Now you will see the two layers in the layers pallet. Keep in mind the layer market in blue is always the active layer and that is also the layer displayed in the large “edit” window. The second method duplicating the base layer is more simple. Click on the base layer and drag it to the small duplicate logo on the top left of the layers pallet. That will give you a duplicate layer. 

The next step is to fill the duplicate layer with a 50% gray value. To do that, select the edit menu on the main menu on the top of the screen. Next step is to select “Fill Layer” in the drop down.

A fill layer option box will open. Make sure in the first drop down menu, 50% gray is selected and press OK.

Important Note: Prior to pressing OK you could also select "difference" in the second drop down menu. A different way of selecting "difference" is, however described in step 6. When 50% gray is selected together with "difference" and you press OK then the picture should look like in Step 7. 

In step 4 if you only selected 50% gray and the bottom drop down menu displayed "normal" then the screen view will look like the picture on the left.

An alternative method selecting "difference", is to select the pull down menu right above the layers pallet on the picture to your left. In the pull down menu select "difference".

What happens in this step is the following. We want to identify the areas in the original picture we can use as true neutral grey areas. How do we find these areas? We fill the picture with a 50% grey value, then we specify the way the 50% gray layer and the original picture layer should interact by selecting “difference”. In the next steps you will see how that will help us find the neutral gray point.

This step shows the picture after filled with a 50% gray and after "difference" was selected.

Next we need to add a threshold layer. Again on the buttons above the layers pallet select the new layers button, 2nd one from left. When you click on this button a drop down menu will give you the opportunity to select a "Threshold" layer.

Alternatively you can select Layers on the top menu and then select adjustment layers and in the drop down menu select Threshold layer.

Next the window on the left will appear. It looks similar too a histogram.

Below the graph you will find a slider on the left and a slider on the right side of the graph. We interested in the slider on the right.

Move or drag the slider on the right side of the graph to left of the graph. To drag, click on the little triangle, keep the mouse button pressed and then drag the slider (mouse) to the left.

As you do that you will see the picture in the main screen turning completely white. Hold the mouse button down and go to the next step.

In this step we will drag the slider to the right again and while doing that you will see that black will return gradually. This is the most critical part of this procedure.

The black areas appearing on the picture represents the areas in the original picture that is 100 % neutral gray. Those are the points in the original picture we will use, to point the gray pointer in Photoshop too, to correct the white balance.

Move the slider little by little left and right until you find a area in the picture you can memorize for later. We will use the area or point you identified to correct the white balance later. When you find and when you marked that spot, press cancel.

In this example, I moved the slider as described above and I identified a small area in the original picture. I then pressed cancel and in the next step I will remove the layers we added in the above steps by clicking on the “eye” symbol next to each layer.

Clicking the eye symbol on and off will help you to memorize that point you identified in the picture. It is important that you play with the slider in the above step until you find a area that was first to go black and you should be able to point to that area when the layers are removed.

If the eye symbol is still on, then the picture will be all gray after the above step. Go to the layers pallet on the bottom right and click on the eye symbol on the left of the 50% gray layer bar. That will hide that layer and you see  the original picture.

Folks, this most probably sound crazy but all we did up to this point was to identify the 100% correct spot in the picture that has all the colors such that it represents the best neutral gray point in the picture.

Often this neutral gray value is referred to as the 18% neutral gray. When using a gray card to set custom white balance in the camera then a 18% gray card is used.

In this step we will use the identified neutral grey spot in the picture to correct the colors in the picture.

Again click on the adjustment layers button above the layers pallet or on the Layers menu on the Main Menu. From there select the "Levels Layer” and the levels window will appear as in step 15. 

With the Level adjustment window open select the "Gray Pen" as indicated in the picture to your left. Click on the gray pen, then move the cursor to the spot in the picture you identified as neutral gray point and then click with the tip of the gray pointer at this point. You will see that the histogram graph will change plus the colors in the pictures will change.

The colors are now 100% correct plus they will look like they did when originally recorded.

It could be at this point that a little contrast is needed plus it could be that only a little saturation is needed to give the picture the ability to jump of the screen, important is to remember not to apply to much adjustment.

To complete the whole process select the Layers menu in the main menu and right at the bottom of the layers menu you then select "Flatten layers". That will flatten all the different layers into a one layer picture and you can now save it in JPEG format for further use.

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