Proper way to auto whitebalance in V7?

ScorpioProd wrote on 7/21/2007, 1:39 PM
What's the correct way to auto white balance with the Color Correction Filter?

One uses the "complimentary colors" eyedroppers, right?

Do you have to find a black for the low, a gray for the mid and a white for the high? Or is it the neutrality that's important, so you can choose a white for all three? It's not always easy to find all three in an image.

And is it really the tip of the eyedropper? Sometimes it doesn't seem like it's really the tip that it picks the color from.

Thanks.

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 7/21/2007, 2:40 PM
Yes, the using complimentary eyedroppers is one good way to do it. And you are correct, ideally you should find black, gray and white. For the low value, you should really find an area in the image that is a neutral and dark as possible. The mid value can be something that's white, just not "full" white. For the high value, you probably shouldn't use a "white" that is completely maxed out in luminance. These areas tend to be "blown out" and are probably near 255-255-255 anyway.

Regarding the eyedropper itself, you can click-drag to make a rectangular box and the value will be the average of all the pixels in the box. This is a pretty handy feature of the eyedroppers in Vegas.

One of the cool things about Vegas is that there's often multiple ways to accomplish a task. There is another method of setting white balance that I used in the old analog days. It uses the waveform and vector scopes. I describe the method in this thread:

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=486968

John
MH_Stevens wrote on 7/21/2007, 8:22 PM
I use the "white" eyedropper in SSC but it works best when you click on a light grey and not blown out pixels. I've always wondered why this is but no one could ever tell me. With Photoshop CS3E the clicking on pure white blow-out works fine. Maybe someone could explain?

Mike