One of the issues that gets talked about more than any other topic on our photography courses is "Why do some of the colours on my images not look the same as what I'm seeing with my own eyes?" The answer lies in the area of colour temperature and white balance. A camera shoots in a wide variety of lighting conditions, with temperatures from as low as 2,900K in dim candlelight up to 10,000K in some daylight conditions. All cameras when recording an image on their sensors record the colour in different ways, that's just the nature of the camera manufacture and model type. What the colour checker can do is help you create a camera profile which is an accurate representation of the colour temperature when the image was shot. The X-Rite ColorChecker Passport is two pieces of kit, it's a colour target as you can see and it's software which you can use in stand-alone or you can use it as a Lightroom3 plugin. The way it works is you have your subject hold the color checker target in front of themselves. You then take a shot of the target while your subject is holding it in the lighting that you will be using for the shoot. The target doesn't have to be in sharp focus but you will have to try and expose properly and avoid any flashing highlights when reviewing the image on your screen. You can now use that image as your colour profile and to also correct your white balance of any colour casts. The beauty of using this tool in Lightroom is that you can create the profile for one shot then synchronise the setting to all the other images taken under the same lighting conditions. I’m sure that some of you are saying, yeah that’s all well and good, but I don’t shoot a whole lot of people to hold my card, I do mostly landscapes. The Color Checker has you covered on that too. There is an optional landscape white balance square that you can click on in the software that adjusts the color warmer or cooler just by clicking different squares. It's a very easy, qiuck and accurate way to getting your colours spot on!
is two pieces of kit, it's a colour target as you can see and it's software which you can use in stand-alone or you can use it as a Lightroom3 plugin. The way it works is you have your subject hold the color checker target in front of themselves. You then take a shot of the target while your subject is holding it in the lighting that you will be using for the shoot. The target doesn't have to be in sharp focus but you will have to try and expose properly and avoid any flashing highlights when reviewing the image on your screen. You can now use that image as your colour profile and to also correct your white balance of any colour casts. The beauty of using this tool in Lightroom is that you can create the profile for one shot then synchronise the setting to all the other images taken under the same lighting conditions. I’m sure that some of you are saying, yeah that’s all well and good, but I don’t shoot a whole lot of people to hold my card, I do mostly landscapes. The Color Checker has you covered on that too. There is an optional landscape white balance square that you can click on in the software that adjusts the color warmer or cooler just by clicking different squares. It's a very easy, qiuck and accurate way to getting your colours spot on!
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