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For the latest and most updated version of the manual, please go to http://www.free-photoshop-plugins.com/documentation/white-balance-manual.htm |
To white balance the image, click on the Eyedropper button. Then drag-select an area of the image that should be grey or white (i.e. a neutral color). The plugin will average the values in that area to reduce noise. It will then calculate the filter parameters needed to neutralize the color cast.
You can set R, G, and B gain manually be moving the sliders or using the text input boxes. The Fine controls have a tenth of the effect of the normal gain controls to allow fine adjustment to color balance. You can use the gain controls to introduce a desired color cast, e.g. to add warmth to the image.
The Highlight Recovery setting can extract highlight detail that is normally clipped during the white balance process. 100 is maximum highlight recovery and 0 is none. You may wish to dial highlight recovery down as it may not work in all situations.
The Highlight Rolloff setting de-saturates highlights so there is a gradual transition between recovered highlight detail and normal detail. Lower settings will expose artifacts from the highlight recovery process. The recommended setting is the default (100). A setting of 0 (via text input) will disable all highlight recovery.
The first step is to white balance the image. This can be done by applying gain / multiplying the channels by some constant. The R, G, and B channels are multiplied by a set of constants such that R=G=B for neutral colors.
Applying gain on the R, G, and B channels will cause one or two of these channels to exceed white level. Normally these values above white level are clipped. However, it is possible to use this information to make an intelligent guess about the other channel(s) that did not have gain applied. The ungained channel(s) will usually contain clipped values; highlight recovery will make an intelligent guess about what the original unclipped values were. If the original image does not contain perfect white balance, then highlight recovery offers the possibility of increasing dynamic range compared to no highlight recovery. However, applying any gain to the image will raise the noise floor and decrease dynamic range to begin with.
You will get technically superior results by shooting to a RAW format and applying any white balance and highlight recovery there. This tool is for situations where you do not have a RAW file to work with.
The R, G, and B Gain settings are internally normalized by the filter. It will only increase the gain of one or two channels, and leave the other channel(s) alone. If you need to add an extreme color cast, turn down the gain settings on the other channels. e.g. a setting of R Gain of 2X and G and B Gain of 0.1 will effectively result in gain values of 20X, 1X, and 1X respectively.
The Fine controls have a tenth of the strength of the normal controls. Total gain = Normal gain + 0.1 * fine Gain.
The Highlight Recovery setting can extract highlight detail that is normally clipped during the white balance process. 100 is maximum highlight recovery and 0 is none. You may wish to dial highlight recovery down as it may not work in all situations.
The Highlight Rolloff setting de-saturates highlights so there is a gradual transition between recovered highlight detail and normal detail. Lower settings will expose artifacts from the highlight recovery process. The recommended setting is the default (100). A setting of 0 (via text input) will disable all highlight recovery.
Mac:
Windows: