WB options

[Wreckdiver]

I would like people's opinions regarding white balancing. I did a photo shoot last night for one of Chippenham's musical theatres; CLOGS. I shot in raw and JPEG and used a cloudy WB for a consistent colour balance across all photos; I could have picked any setting as I am only really interested in the raw files. The resulting photos had a huge variation in colour cast as you would expect with constantly changing light colours.

So my question is how would you set the WB over all the photos? A subjective question really as it comes down to personal taste but I think the images as shot are far too vivid and garish but depict the mood of the scenes, as shown in the first 2 images below. The other two I have WB'd with the colour picker in PS (which removed most of the ambience) and then set the colour profile to Adobe Landscape which, to me, restores some of the ambience. No other PP has been done on the images.

I think I prefer the WB corrected images but what do you do think, is there a 'standard' way of WBing in such a demanding scenario and which of the shots below do you prefer? The images were taken on Nikon FF cameras, hope it is OK to post here.

Thanks.

[Bikie John]

As a rule of thumb, I try and get the flesh tones looking about right. And your edited ones look pretty good to me. For the one on the left, I think the original looks horrible - it could only really be worse if the light were magenta! Which, sadly, seems a popular choice for lighting musicians. For the one on the right, the original doesn't look too bad (personal taste again), I would probably still adjust it but maybe not quite as much as you have.

John

[Wreckdiver]

Thanks John, getting skin tones right was what I felt was important. I am no expert at all with theatrical lighting but it did look very overdone. The concensus of CLOGS is to go with my manual white balancing, which would be my choice also. The only adjustments I made was appling the colour picker to white objects which restored skin tones.

Thanks.

[shenstone]

I agree with the above.

The difficult part ogf getting skin tones right in these situations is that they are often wearing OTT makeup. If they bring all the house lights up at the end when its more stable maybe get a picture then to compare others to

Regards Andy

[LadyG]

I think you've done a grand job. Stage lighting is a task of its own, and one I've battled with many times - at least theatrical should be more stable than music.

I used to use Landscape but nowadays I try to find something white in the image (eyes, teeth) and use that as a guide. However that can wash out other colours (or leave a face pale blue) so then you're back into colour picking or grading.

[Wreckdiver]

Hi Carol, the best option was to pick something white and then apply Landscape profile. I did find the colours washed out a bit after the WB but Landscape restored them quite well. The result was natural skin tones.

[pdk42]

For me, AWB and fix in post.

[Wreckdiver]

Tried AWB Paul and that was pretty good. Eventually went for the colour picker and Landscape profile. Cheers.

[Mark2112]

As you acknowledge, WB is a subjective thing. I can only say that my preference strongly supports your second image for its stage-lit effect. Great pictures too, by the way.