White Balancing Shots and Solving Common Problems

How to White Balance Shots 101

We started in Part 1 learning how to white balance shots by looking at the major tools we use to accomplish that task. In this Insight we’ll be taking a quick look at the Temperature and Tint sliders commonly found in almost all post-production software.

You’ll also learn how I deal with subtle color balance issues when I’m happy with how the shadows and highlights look. Often, there’s a problem in the midtones and I have a simple solution to deal with them (using Curves).

Recapping what you’ve learned in Parts 1 & 2 of White Balancing Shots 101:

• White Balancing mostly involves getting the Red, Green and Blue channels into proper alignment.

• Proper RGB alignment results in neutral color elements staying neutral.

• There are generally two types of White Balance problems: Either the RGB channels are fully out of alignment. Or the RGB channels are only out of alignment within a distinct tonal range (shadows, midtones or highlights).

• Tools for dealing with fully misaligned RGB Channels include Offset controls and Curves. And sometimes Temp / Tint, depending on how they work in your software.

• Tools for managing tonal range white balance issues include 3-Way Color Wheels and Curves. And sometimes Temp / Tint, depending on how they work in your software.

Introducing: Color Correction Practice Projects

This Insight also introduces you to footage you’ll be able to purchase, download and color grade in a product we’ll be releasing soon, Color Correction Practice Projects. The footage you see me using in this Insight come from our first project, In the Shadow of Giants.

Giants is a 10-minute documentary short shot in the Artists Quarter in Paris. It features three different cameras, time-lapse, CinemaDNG, .mp4 and ProRes footage. Plus, the footage is a mix of Log and Flat’ish record profiles. Giants features original music from a local Parisian.  Practice Projects provide you the opportunity to hone your skills with challenging footage that is also high-quality footage—and fun to work on. You’ll be hearing more about this very very soon.

Errata

I mention in this Insight about my previous videos on using the Temperature and Tint controls. I seemed to have mistaken the upcoming Resolve 12.5 title, which goes over this in-depth. I have not done so here in the Insights Library.

As a result, you can count on Part 3 to this series where I’ll show very specific techniques to use these controls very very efficiently. And we’ll round up some major apps to see if they implement these controls differently.

-pi