Capture NX2 Color Balance

[Mani]

I dont if i am missing any option or is it really like that , in Capture NX to get the right White Balance is like lost in limbo. why cannot there be a option like in , Adobe LR or Capture 1, auto White Balance.....

 

[Mike Buckley]

I seem to remember that it does have an auto white balance setting when editing NEFs. Otherwise, you're right that it doesn't have one.

 

[Porchking]

It does have an auto calculate white balance for Nef's but not for jpgs. With jpgs you have to fool with color balance sliders. I didn't know you could do white balance with adobe on jpgs either.

Mike

 

[hornagain]

Yep NX2 has a 'Calculate Automatically" along with the other handful of preset WB options. You then can also fine adjust on those automatically calculated values.

 

[Mike Buckley]

I didn't know you could do white balance with adobe on jpgs either.

Photoshop Elements (which of course is a light version) has two methods. There is the auto white balance setting and there is the eye dropper that you can apply to an area of the image that has neutral luminosity. CNX2 has neither method when using JPEGs but it has both methods when using NEFs.

 

[Omar]

Photoshop Elements (which of course is a light version) has two methods. There is the auto white balance setting and there is the eye dropper that you can apply to an area of the image that has neutral luminosity. CNX2 has neither method when using JPEGs but it has both methods when using NEFs.

Dropping a grey point would be similar to the eye dropper approach, not?

 

[bper]

Hi guys - been a while since I posted. I just spent $19.95 on a small WhiBal card and it has been the best money I every spent as far as white balance. Now I just take a shot when I start my shoot of the WhiBal and use that in Capture NX2 with the eyedropper to set the white balance, then copy and paste the white balance to all the other shots in the same shoot (light).

I've tried all kinds of home grown things and this actually works. For outdoor shots on a sunny day, I've found 5300K work best and comes close to what the WhiBal calculates the white balance at.

I've only had the WhiBal about a week, so will need to use it a bit to say it's the cats meow. There are a lot of interesting videos to look at on the WhiBal site and I have heard only good about the product, so thought I'd give it a try. Basically, I have it attached to the outside of my slingshot bag and just throw it on the ground and take a picture of it and the WhiBal as I get ready to begin shooting. The one I bought was the basic pocket card (the cheapest). I'll link the WhiBal site below for anyone interested in reading more.

http://mtapesdesign.com/whibal/

 

[Mani]

Thank you every one ,, and i agree grey card id the best option, but there are many changing situation some time like moving between different room with different color paint , different set of lights and its so fast and changing its a challenge to use the grey card

Here is the white balance set using Capture nx . and need to fiddle more .....

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and this one done in capture 1 , darn simple just 1 click on Auto thats it and pretty close to natural tonnes

Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)

 

[Mike Buckley]

Dropping a grey point would be similar to the eye dropper approach, not?

Similar, yes. The disadvantage for me of the grey point is that the round dot is too large. I can't be as precise with placing it as when using Adobe's eyedropper.

 

[Mike Buckley]

I just spent $19.95 on a small WhiBal card

I spent about $5 years ago on three grey cards about 8x10. Imagine how many cards the size of a WhiBal can be cut from them. The cards become worn in ways the WhiBal won't, but I have used my batch of grey cards for nearly ten years and still have plenty of them left.

 

[daveg]

The disadvantage for me of the grey point is that the round dot is too large. I can't be as precise with placing it as when using Adobe's eyedropper.

???

Zoom in - the the "round dot" remains the same size regardless of zoom percentage. At 800% a pixel dwarfs the round dot. Putting a "Watch Point" on what you THINK is gray will tell you which way the shift is - toward R, G or B (or combinations therof). This is one of the "proper" uses of Watch Points.

+1 for Gray Point in NX2 - if at first you don't succeed...................

In cases where there is no "gray" point I choose a preset which most closely describes the ambient lighting and adjust the Fine Adjustment until it looks right.

DG

 

[Mike Buckley]

???

At 800% a pixel dwarfs the round dot.

Why should I bother zooming in using NX2 when I don't have to do that using Photoshop? Also, if the luminosity isn't neutral, at 800% I can see so little of the image that I have to unzoom again to see more of it. This speaks to the fact that I'm not very good at determining neutral luminosity.

 

[daveg]

Mike,

I must be missing something!

I have CS4 and NX2 open and (if I ignore everything else) it is like looking at the same eyedropper.

Why does the eyedropper in NX2 appear to be smaller to you than the eyedropper in CSx?

It is impossible to show this because "print screen" ignores the cursor - anyone know a way around this?

Determining the Gray Point is not easy but if someone has a white shirt/dress on or there's a tablecloth or similar in the image and you know that they are "supposed" to be white then, provided that they are not burned out, that's your Gray Point. Doesn't work every time but if it doesn't revert back to what works for you.

Your comments about the eyedropper are confusing me?

DG

P.S. I see where the "confusion" is arising! Instead of using the "Neutral Control Point" go to Camera Settings / White Balance / Change to Set Gray Point and THEN your eyedropper is EXACTLY the same as in CSx. Put it on something that you want to be a clean Gray/White and you have it.

 

[Mike Buckley]

I see where the "confusion" is arising! Instead of using the "Neutral Control Point" go to Camera Settings / White Balance / Change to Set Gray Point and THEN your eyedropper is EXACTLY the same as in CSx. Put it on something that you want to be a clean Gray/White and you have it.

Dave,

If I remember correctly, we were discussing at the time that CNX2's white balance eyedropper is not available unless using a NEF. When post-processing a JPEG or TIFF, only the neutral color point is available. In that case, I would rather use the eye dropper in Photoshop for the reasons we have been discussing. I have been post-processing a lot of JPEGs lately that are scans of slides, so the difference between using Photoshop's eyedropper and CNX2's neutral color point is very noticeable to me.

Once I have post-processed all of the slides, this will be a non-issue for me because I always shoot NEFs digitally. One of the big reasons I shoot NEFs is because of the ease of altering white balance in CNX2.

 

[daveg]

Dave,

I have been post-processing a lot of JPEGs lately that are scans of slides, so the difference between using Photoshop's eyedropper and CNX2's neutral color point is very noticeable to me.

That's what I was missing then!

Sorry,

DG

 

[Dayo]

Here is the white balance set using Capture nx . and need to fiddle more .....

and this one done in capture 1 , darn simple just 1 click on Auto thats it and pretty close to natural tones

I like NX but for the type of shooting you were doing there, I'll just stick with COne for the pp.

Firstly, it seems to shine with skin tones and secondly, it is easy to copy your adjustments across to the other 951 images.

BTW, wouldn't you expect to have issues with skin tones when using Vivid Pic Controls?

 

[Ronald M]

Mani

NX has a slight red tint and the value reads 1.04.

Capture 1 looks like some combination of cyan and yellow.

Calibrated iMac Monitor.

 

[Roscoe]

One major word of caution using Whibal as a reference shot...DO NOT SHOOT IN AUTO WB. You CANNOT batch WB settings over a shoot if the shots were taken in auto WB. I have no idea why Nikon would do this, but test it out yourself.

I use a Whibal (or did until I lost it...ggrrhh) and make sure I shoot in an actual setting (e.g. daylight)...may not be correct, but at least I can batch correct them later.

 

[Mike Buckley]

You CANNOT batch WB settings over a shoot if the shots were taken in auto WB.

I don't know why Nikon did it either. I don't know enough about it to know if their thinking is flawed. However, I do know why WB settings using Auto white balance can't be batch processed: the settings are relative, not absolute. All other WB settings are absolute and can be batch processed.

 

[daveg]

There you go again!

Having made it clear above that you were talking about JPEGs and not NEFs, you're refering to Roscoe's post which obviously refers to NEFs because, in a JPEG, you can't access the WB to batch it whether it be Auto or otherwise.

I have always thought of NX2 as a RAW CONVERTER and, although it recognises the TIFF and JPEG formats, I can't imagine why anyone would want to use it to process those formats.

In the case of scanned Images, I always scan directly into PS/PSE using the import function. If I'm happy that the scan requires no further work I'll save as a JPEG. If the scan needs further work I save as a TIFF and come back to it later (in PS/PSE).

I started using RAW many years ago precisely because of the problems associated with colour balance and the difficulty in correcting it.

:smile:

DG