Setting white balance with RAW files

[aquayle]

Reading a tutorial on Understanding RAW Files Explained
they say
Raw files have not had while balance set. They are tagged with whatever the camera's setting was, (either that which was manually set or via auto-white-balance), but the actual data has not been changed. This allows one to set any colour temperature and white balance one wishes after the fact with no image degradation. It should be understood that once the file has been converted from the linear space and has had a gamma curve applied (such as in a JPG) white balance can no longer be properly done.

If I read this correctly - they are saying there is absoultely no point in setting the white balance if you are saving the picture in RAW format.

A good resource for phtography The Luminous Landscape

[GLOC]

It is correct but it does mean that if you do shoot the correct white balance to start with, you don't have to f*ck around with it in PSCS and therefore can run an action such as Dr Browns to convert your RAW files to TIFF or JPEG.

LL is a good site and I really should get back to it and read up some more.

HTH

Regards

[David A]

Originally Posted by aquayle

Reading a tutorial on Understanding RAW Files Explained
they say
Raw files have not had while balance set. They are tagged with whatever the camera's setting was, (either that which was manually set or via auto-white-balance), but the actual data has not been changed. This allows one to set any colour temperature and white balance one wishes after the fact with no image degradation. It should be understood that once the file has been converted from the linear space and has had a gamma curve applied (such as in a JPG) white balance can no longer be properly done.

If I read this correctly - they are saying there is absoultely no point in setting the white balance if you are saving the picture in RAW format.

A good resource for phtography The Luminous Landscape

Bingo. The little eyedropper white balance tool in CS or CS2 does it all for you, and then still allows you to tweak afterwards.

[Daniel Taylor]

Whilst I use CS or Elements for the finer tweaking, Rawshooter allows a very quick and easy changing of whitebalance, temperature, etc. I would much rather shoot unadjusted and then make the camera setting changes post event.