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Fixing White Balance with a Grey Layer

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6 comments

  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    You would do it pretty much the same way.

    In Photo RAW:

    1. Use the Add Color Fill Layer from the Layer menu and set its color to 50% gray then set its Blending Mode to Difference.
    2. Go to Effects, add a Tone Enhancer then increase the Exposure to find the black point as shown in the video.
    3. Disable the Color Fill Layer
    4. Choose the lower image Layer and in the Develop panel use the Color picker (eyedropper) to click on the chosen spot..
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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I should have added be sure to remove the Color Fill Layer before returning to the Browser so you don't create a new .onphoto file and all you edits will remain with the original raw file.

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  • Russell Webb

    Thank you Brian but can you direct me to the video in part 2 of your reply, at the moment when adding/selecting a colour fill layer there is no option for the 50% grey so I change the values to 128 on the RGB side to get 50% grey.

     

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  • Brian Lawson Community moderator

    I don't have time to go back through the video right now, I'm getting ready to go to work. However, he used the grayscale swatches in the video to set the fill color. I'm on a Mac so I just clicked on the 50% point on the grayscale slider to set it in my testing. Using 128 for the RGB values works just the same.

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  • Russell Webb

    TY

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  • David Tillett
    Great answers

    You could also do this using local adjustments

    - create new local adjustment if necessary and invert mask so applies every where

    - select Paint With Colour and change colour to 50% gray

    - change blend mode to Difference

    (If you want to use this technique a lot then you could then save these settings as a new Style, e.g. Colour Balance, so in future just use this style on correct local adjustment)

    - add another local adjustment and invert its mask, then adjust to find black

    - go back to Develop pane and click colour balance dropper on selected area, as Develop changes are carried out below the local adjustments you can leave these on to help get right point if you like, else disable so that you can check the effect

    - when happy delete the two local adjustments

     

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