Color Balance in Digital Photography

Color balance in Digital Photography is used for determining color temperature of light for determining intensities of colors. Also known as White Balance. Previously, we discussed about Filter in Digital Photography, the color filters basically shifts the Color Balance.

Basics about Color Balance

The human eye has such analogy to Color Balance, it is known as chromatic adaptation. Color balance is often synonymously used as White Balance, this is the reason of the abbreviation AWB, which stands for Automatic White Balance. However, Color Balance is a better terminology as Color Balance is associated with the color casting of the photograph.

The basic theory is, under daylight, the full spectrum of visible colors are obvious, but when any artificial light used, depending upon the source of type of light, the ‘mood’ of Photograph changes.

Color Balance in Digital Photography

In case of Digital Photography, data of image is acquired by sensors not on film. There is an intervening Image Processing Engine, which usually used the set function for transforming and correcting the Color Balance from the acquired values to new values that are appropriate for color reproduction or display.

The photographer can manually adjust the color temperature (the result is the wanted Color balance in Image), which is typical for certain lighting situations. When adjusting for fluorescent lighting, we can set Color Balance appropriately for example.

The color balance change and adjustments also can be done as a part of post processing, i.e. by using any image editing applications which usually operate directly on the red, green, and blue channel.

Most digital cameras have a means to select a color correction based on the type of scene illumination which actually might have specific deterioration specific to the model of Digital Camera, for this reason, the advanced Image Editing Softwares provides an automatic adjustment of Color balance and other deterioration from a custom profile.