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Shoot: Setting White Balance Demo

Lesson 2 from: Skin 101: Lighting, Retouching and Understanding Skin

Lindsay Adler

Shoot: Setting White Balance Demo

Lesson 2 from: Skin 101: Lighting, Retouching and Understanding Skin

Lindsay Adler

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Lesson Info

2. Shoot: Setting White Balance Demo

Lesson Info

Shoot: Setting White Balance Demo

as I'm looking at her right now one of the things you want to be aware of is that the light that is hitting her is not going to be what my camera sees and the light coming out of the modeling light is not going to be what my camera c so it's kind of hard to have hard to get that's why I don't and I will use ah color checker of some sort you look lovely oh by the way this'll lovely model be with us all day so she has volunteered for me to get up close and personal in her skin all day just pretty brave so thank you oh and you can I can just also have the deal in a remote if I need okay that's cool take a look perfect okay someone turned my modeling later on and I'm just going to show you through the different show you through the different things that I would do and what is going to get that hooked up so I'm going to go ahead and sit my white balance to auto and so you can see for her it might not be so bad I actually requested that she wear neutral clothing so that if she was wearing re...

d or wearing blue it wouldn't throw it off and then we also selected a neutral background something to be aware of the o is thies neutral backgrounds aren't eighteen percent great even so they actually will be incorrect so if you try to grab a white balance let's say you had a great background you didn't use your color checker and you try to use your white balance reader off the background it won't actually be right because they used different dyes to make them different color so it's not actually a neutral tone testing it perfect channel seventeen okay cool all right so I'm going to go teo s o one hundred and we're gonna talk about this but I'm going to go toe my think speed going toto won two hundred of the second this is in two more numbers why that's important okay wait just a little bit all right so I'm gonna do a quick test shot take a look and I'm gonna open up just a little bit more so if everybody at home can see this as well it is very very very blue and I'm on auto weight balance I'm looking at this right now and what it did is it saw it kind of all the neutral tones in the background and then it's all the warmth of her skin and it said okay well everything else is neutral so we got this warmth of her skin I'm going to cool it down even more so it is it is very off not even close okay so the next thing I might try is setting a white balance preset so four strobes most robes are supposed to be daylight balanced some of them are and some of them aren't which is one of the reasons that presets don't always work so well I also usually try either daylight or the flash preset I find that for me my d one ares I like the priest the flash preset better than a daylight so let me just switch over to this and see how it improved huge huge difference massive difference between the two her skin is going to be much warmer and much more true to it now of course I just told you I've experimented with these lights so I already know that I'm pretty happy with the fact that it is a flash but if you're photographing a lower end a less expensive lighting kit less expensive lighting setups they're not always color consistent or color accurate so you might have had this experience I had this experience a time but let's say I popped off a whole bunch of frames and I'm shooting really really fast and I'm looking at my images and I'm like I didn't change anything why is the color going like this up and down and what happens is as it's recycling especially for less expensive packs when it's recycling and the way that it's working is your color's changing the whole time so this is one reason if skin is really important to you you might want to look into the system you're purchasing and invest in something that has true color accuracy which it's really not that expensive to get it would just be not the lowest end systems and I don't want to call anybody output slower and systems okay so can I have the color checker next perfect and so I have appointed so that it is being illuminated by this strobe I don't want to have it tilted away because I needed to have it basically flatly and evenly lit and then could you grab a white balance I checker now can you know okay I was just asking okay so it's cool it's not too big of a deal what I can do is grab the white balance checker in light room and I can click on the bottom centre grey point to neutralize damage okay so that's pretty good we're getting better we're improving all right so now it's cool it's not a big deal so that you have like right there perfect conducive you click on develop module we're in light room right now thinking and on that top right that's the white balance eyedropper which she has perfect right yep and in grab bottom center bottom centre down more literal right there perfect and so if there was going to if there was any color cast it would shift it just a little bit but what's great is I'll show you this on day three is I can create a custom profile where it's going to read this and make the color is perfect so this is usually the direction that I opt for in the final option is going to be a custom white balance so here's what I wanted I'm going to put my camera back on auto and I'm gonna come around to where she is I'm gonna put this on the front of my lens next to her face point at and I actually by the way flip it to manual otherwise it's going to go searching nonstop okay pointing it back at the light take a quick picture and so what you're going to see is a gray nothing swatch okay we don't really see any color problems with it but it will know if this is off so what I do in the back of my camera and let me alright so I'm gonna go into my menus and I've got to find where my white balance is same probably passing it there you go okay so for me it's in the first camera settings the second menu over I hit on white balance and I go all the way over to the dial that looks like I don't know two wedges and a rectangle I don't really know what it means but that one and I click set so this is how I'm going to be able to set my custom white balance so let me take another image here oh man you off and take another picture okay so this I love this skin tone this is exactly where it should be as I'm looking and flipping through my pictures the skin tone is really warm it's glowing but it's not too saturated so if you are in a controlled situation that might be a great way to go so those two would be the options I'd recommend depending on what you're comfortable with so those are the very very essentials of white balance long story short just do it I really like I want to make it easier for you but that's that's it I will show you some don't worry on the third day I'll show you some saving technique if you did not like most of us sometimes don't you think I know okay so questions on that all right good I thought it was pretty straightforward kind of guys do it okay so I'm gonna have you step out for a second and we can pull this out for a moment and I'm just going tio can I pass this to you thank you yes as far as like the whole thing with the you know the color checking and trying to make sure that you're you know your flat with the life you have the light off to the side that you wanted the color check fled to the camera do you wantto get to the light to light flats of the light so if she's sitting here and the light is off to this sign I usually turn it towards whatever light source because there's no light over here so what will happen if I have it turned to the shadow sign those swatches won't be correctly illuminated so it can't really read the true color so I turn it towards whatever the light source is if I'm in a situation with mixed light which we're getting two next that's our next section one of things you have to be aware of is if you try to color checker mixed light it's not gonna work because what will happen is you've got that color checker and let's say half of her face is blue and half of it is yellow so half your color checker is for the blue and half the color checker is for the yellow when so it won't work because it's mixed light so what I will do is let's say I can't do anything about that makes light I don't have anything to light the scene with I'm stuck with it I at least pick what light source I want to be predominant so let's say there's a big window here I'll point that that color checker at the window and that's what we're white balancing for so it is actually the perfect segway into our next segment which is mixed lighting which is awful but I know if you're like me I photographed the weddings and events and like sometimes you can't get around it and it just is what it is

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Makeup Contour Reference
Retouching Checklist
Frequency Separation
Retouching Files
Keynote 1
Keynote 2
Gear Guide
Skin Retouching Action File

Ratings and Reviews

Kirsi Todd
 

Lindsay is probably my favourite instructor (and that is saying a lot, as there are many incredible instructors). She is so clear in her teaching and she also seems like such a nice and humble person despite her incredible success. This course is one of the best courses I have ever seen. Thank you Lindsay and Creative Live!

Aliah Husain
 

Lindsay is an INCREDIBLE photographer and teacher, and also seems like a wonderful person! This class is great for beginners and more advanced photographers, as well. She goes into tons of detail on all the technical stuff like lighting and editing, and it is fascinating to see her interact with and shoot her models, work with her equipment, and photoshop like a pro. Huge amounts of information for what you pay for. If you are looking to improve your skills in photographing and retouching people, purchase this class!!

Andrew Lederman
 

Great course. Lindsay Adler is one of the best instructors for any creative live classes that I have seen. Simple and easy to understand, clear workflow, very friendly and non condescending like some other instructors. Could you put a link (maybe I just didn't see it) to where to download the actions used in this tutorial?

Student Work

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