White Balance

[Lümmel]

Hello,
every time, when I process a RAW file and switch to the colour tab, the white balance is set to 6500, regardless what the original wb of the picture was. I told the program in the preferences to use the wb of the camera but can never see it. Is it intended? If so, how can I change this behaviour? It is confusing not to see the original settings.

Regards,
Lümmel

[Stas Yatsenko]

Color temperature of the white balance is actually a color correction which can be applied in camera (for JPEGS), during RAW convertion or additionally in postprocessing (Helicon Filter). You can see camera information of WB in EXIF information only. It is not used by the program because normally this correction is already applied by camera or by RAW converter.

You can select other white balance on the Colors tab as save these settings as default values for this tab.

[Lümmel]

Well, WB and colour temperature are known, of course . However, every other RAW-processor shows the _actual_ colour temperature in the WB register, while Helicon Filter always shows "6500K". If I want to change the colour temperature, it would be good to know in the colour tab, which CT is actually given by the RAW so that I know from what basis on I change the CT.

Regards,
Lümmel

[Stas Yatsenko]

Hmm.. 6500K means that no wb correction is applied. If we set the slider to actual value, say 2800K, that would mean applying WB correction second time (first = camera or RAW converter). Maybe we can show info about actual color temperature from EXIF in the tooltip for WB slider?

[Lümmel]

It shouldn't be wrong to set the slider to the actual colour temperature because you always have to confirm if you want to apply a filter in Helicon Filter. Nevertheless, having an information about the actual CT in the filter tab would be nearly as good as the other option. Having it in the tooltipps would be useless for those who deactivated the tooltipps (like me ).

Regards,
Lümmel

[Stas Yatsenko]

Thanks for the tip. We want to add more functionality but we do not want to overload interface with things that are difficult to understand. That is why I mentioned tooltips. This is the place where additional information does not affect overall look.

[Lümmel]

I'm afraid that I have to insist a little bit . Actually, if I open a RAW and choose the colour tab, leaving the slider to the standard of 6500K, apply the filter and save the file, nothing happens to the WB, it still has it's originall CT of e.g. 5300, although I told the program to apply the standard CT of 6500. If I change the CT to a value of less than 6500K, HF actually reduces the original CT, not starting with 6500K. You can observe this behaviour easily. What HF does is not to change the CT but to enhance or reduce the colour sliders below. That is observable if you open the result in another RAW-processor and check the WB.

If I choose the WB-picker, then the CT is set to nothing. You can see this in you own tutorial on the HF-Homepage.

Do you think that this is intended? To me,it is completely confusing! I can not see the cause why HF shouldn't set the CT-slider (and the corresponding colour sliders) to the actual WB given by the camera (as really all RAW-converter do). If HF is intended to handle raw-file, then WB is applied by HF at the moment of saving the result. It doesn't matter how often it was changed by camera, opening in HF and changing in the colour tab.

Kind regards,
Lümmel

[Stas Yatsenko]

I'm afraid that I have to insist a little bit . Actually, if I open a RAW and choose the colour tab, leaving the slider to the standard of 6500K, apply the filter and save the file, nothing happens to the WB, it still has it's originall CT of e.g. 5300, although I told the program to apply the standard CT of 6500. If I change the CT to a value of less than 6500K, HF actually reduces the original CT, not starting with 6500K. You can observe this behaviour easily.

>What HF does is not to change the CT but to enhance or reduce the colour sliders below. That is observable if you open the result in another RAW-processor and check the WB.

Internally any WB correction is changing RGB curves. HF shows it, other programs - not. We believe, it gives better control over WB.

Do you think that this is intended? To me,it is completely confusing! I can not see the cause why HF shouldn't set the CT-slider (and the corresponding colour sliders) to the actual WB given by the camera (as really all RAW-converter do).

HF is not a RAW converter, it is a general image processing program. It can open RAW files using different RAW modules and those modules are responsible for correcting WB. RAW module gets information about WB from EXIF and developes raw data to RGB image. So RGB image is already WB-corrected. WB information in EXIF is information about lightening conditions at the moment of shooting the image. So it has meaning only for RAW data, but not for developed or processed RGB image.