How to Correct White Balance Color Cast Using GIMP
How to Correct White Balance Color Cast Using GIMP GA S REGULAR Menu Lifewire Tech for Humans Newsletter! Search Close GO Software & Apps > Design 33 33 people found this article helpful
If the result doesn't look right, select Reset and try a different area of the image. When the colors look natural, press OK. While this technique may lead to more natural colors, it is possible that the exposure may suffer a little, so be prepared to make further corrections, such as using curves in GIMP. In the image to the left, you will see a dramatic change. There is still a slight color cast to the photo, however. We can make minor corrections to reduce this cast using the techniques that follow.
Correct Poor White Balance in Photos With GIMP
Balance the colors in your pictures with GIMP
By Ian Pullen Ian Pullen Writer Ian Pullen is a former Lifewire writer and an experienced graphic designer and web developer with a strong interest in free and open-source graphics software. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on June 20, 2020 Tweet Share Email Tweet Share EmailIn This Article
Expand Jump to a Section White Balance RAW Format Photos Step-by-Step: Correct Color Cast With Pick Gray Tool Adjust Color Balance Adjust Hue-Saturation Digital cameras are versatile and can be set to automatically select the best settings for most situations to ensure that the photos you take are as high quality as possible. However, in some cases, they may have problems in selecting the correct white balance setting. GIMP — short for GNU Image Manipulation Program — is open source image editing software that makes it relatively easy to correct white balance.How White Balance Effects Photos
Most light appears white to the human eye, but in reality, different types of light, such as sunlight and tungsten light, have slightly different colors, and digital cameras are sensitive to this. If a camera has its white balance set incorrectly for the type of light it is capturing, the resulting photo will have an unnatural color cast. You can see that in the warm yellow cast in the left-side photo above. The photo on the right is after the corrections that are explained below.Should You Use RAW Format Photos
Serious photographers will proclaim that you should always shoot in RAW format because you are able to easily change the white balance of a photo during processing. If you want the best photos possible, then RAW is the way to go. However, if you're a less serious photographer, the additional steps in processing RAW format can be more complicated and time-consuming. When you shoot JPG images, your camera automatically handles many of these processing steps for you, such as sharpening and noise reduction.Correct Color Cast With Pick Gray Tool
If you have got a photo with a color cast, then it will be perfect for this tutorial. Open the photo in GIMP. Go to Colors > Levels to open the Levels dialog. Press Pick Grey Point, which looks like a pipette with a gray box next to it. Press somewhere on the photo using the gray point picker to define what is a mid-color tone. The Levels tool will then make an automatic correction to the photo based on this to improve the color and exposure of the photo.If the result doesn't look right, select Reset and try a different area of the image. When the colors look natural, press OK. While this technique may lead to more natural colors, it is possible that the exposure may suffer a little, so be prepared to make further corrections, such as using curves in GIMP. In the image to the left, you will see a dramatic change. There is still a slight color cast to the photo, however. We can make minor corrections to reduce this cast using the techniques that follow.