manual white balance vs. photoshop

can photoshop be used in place of setting the manual white balance?

i suppose its harder without a white reference in the picture, but possible.

i did alot of shots with my sony dsc-p9's auto settings and photoshops autolevels which i could fade back.

i wonder if i could have gotten better results using a camera with a manual white balance setting.

I think the custom white balance stuff helps a bunch. I recentlly got the S500 to go with the new Inon fisheye lens. The fisheye lens means no internal strobe anymore. The stuff at

http://lionfish.us/nc

were shooting with AWB set, and the stuff at

http://lionfish.us/20040725/

http://lionfish.us/20040726/

were done with the custom white balance on the back of my slate

reset every 15 feet or so.

The custom white balance reduces the overall light that the sensor

sees (so stuff starts to blur faster.)

I have trouble sometimes doing the post-process color correction

where the red channel is too narrow, and instead of getting a nice

gradient of brown or grey (where the narrow red channel is being

streched) I get splochy jumps.

can photoshop be used in place of setting the manual white balance?  

i suppose its harder without a white reference in the picture, but possible.

 

i did alot of shots with my sony dsc-p9's auto settings and photoshops autolevels which i could fade back.  

i wonder if i could have gotten better results using a camera with a manual white balance setting.

You can remove a color cast with Photoshop (or any other good program), the major problem is that if you don't use the camera white balance the red component of the picture will be very noisy if your camera does not allow taking RAW pictures.

If you have taken your pictures with at least an auto white balance it should be quite similar to a manual white balance if you have white and dark area in the picture.

I think the custom white balance does a lot more for you than the auto if you are

more than 15 feet under, mostly because nothing is really white anymore, it has

that blue tinge to it, so the auto balance doesn't have much of a chance.

remember it is always better to try and capture the best possible image (in terms of lighting, color balance and detail) with the camera, rather than relying on photoshop miracles afterwards.

Photoshop is powerful, but it cannot fix what simply is not there, without creating enormous amounts of post-processing touchup for you, as well as

I've found the simplest adjustment (on my Oly 5060) is to set the white balance to "cloudy" - this makes the camera think its overcast, so it ads warmth back into the image, taking blue cast out of reds and yellows.

If you are really concerned about dead-on white balance, you can take something photo white with you, and spot meter it on the dive - I know a few people who have used white poker chips, which hold up well underwater!

For what it's worth.

When I did Manual White Balance underwater, my images came out much better. Red's were added back without making the water purple.

When trying to "manual white balance" with Photoshop levels, the water would always turn purple when adding the reds back.

If your Camera is able to shoot in RAW you don't need manual white Blance. If not, like stated before: You can do al lot with Levels/Curves but no miracles.

Simon