Raw or JPEG

[hikeinct]

I just bought a Nikon D80. I was wondering if its better to shoot in RAW mode or JPEG. I am sure this is a personal choice, but am trying to get a feel if there are big differences between the two. This is the first camera that I have owned that could shoot in raw mode.

By the way chose the D80 over the XTI, just beacuse it felt better in my hand. The XTI was a little to small. I think they are both great cameras, but it just came done to how it felt in my hand.

[GaryK]

Dave

Grant and Jodi did some testing regarding this. Obviously the end result would depend on a whole slew of variables but their consensus was that
RAW gave more depth to the photo (deeper shadows.. truer blacks).
This does of course come at a space cost and a few more steps in the processing area.
What it really boiled down to was what type of photos you were going to shoot. Just fun party shots then why not jpeg.. easier to email, everybody can view them.
I would also guess (my opinion only) that if you are going to use a lower end home inkjet (even photo type) for output, that the differences would not really be that noticeable.

If, on the other hand you want to make top notch reproductions for fun and profit then RAW would have to be considered.:)

[AKman]

hikeinct, good afternoon:

Set your camera up so that you can shoot in both RAW and JPEG format at the same time unless you just want to shoot a whole bunch of JPEG's. This way you will have both file formats to choose from when you make your decision to start processing your images in the computer.

You will find that RAW image quality is far superior to the JPEG format when you get ready to make large prints.

Check your camera software and see if you can extract the JPEG's from the RAW/JPEG combination in your computer. Also, think about how you are going to convert the RAW to a TIFF, PSD or some other format.

I shoot both all of the time because it gives me loads of flexibility with both formats.

Just my humble opinion.

Patrick

[LeeOtsubo]

RAW and JPEG aren't better or worse, right or wrong, good or bad, they're just different formats for different purposes. When shooting on assignment and I need to meet a deadline, JPEG is the only way to go. There's no time to be messing around with RAW. The trade-off is that WB needs to be dead-on because there aren't any "Mulligans" with JPEG. When I'm shooting for myself, I enjoy the extra flexibility of RAW.

As for lighter blacks with JPEG, that might occur if you shoot anything less than the highest JPEG quality and set Saturation/Contrast parameters to mimic a P&S. I believe the Canon DR defaults to more saturated, contrasty and sharpened parameters. The gray-black probably results from JPEG artifacts caused by crunching the data too hard.

I doubt that RAW offers better large prints. I regularly enlarge 6 and 8 MP images taken as Large/Fine JPEG to 20x30 or 24x36. Of course, these are sports photos, not fine art, portraits or landscapes so that might make a difference.

I shoot RAW + Small/Normal JPEG when I need to quickly get photos up on a web site. RAW + Large/Fine JPEG is a waste of memory card and HD space in my opinion. I'm not a wedding photographer (and never want to be one) but that's one place where I might shoot RAW + Large/Fine JPEG. Get most of the photos out ASAP as JPEG and spend extra time and care on formals shot in RAW.

Just my US$0.02 worth.

[mom to 4]

Lee:

Being you brought up white balance :o .....

I shoot jpgs at the footbal games. It is now getting colder....last game it was 44 degrees. I noticed all my photos had a pinkish/redish cast to them. Someone mentioned that is probably my white balance.

So, If I am shooting jpgs, in Tv mode (canon rebel) with and ISO of 400, 800 or 1600, what do I do with the white balance??????????

I am really afraid of RAW right now. I've only had my Canon about 6 months and haven't even scratched the surface of all the different modes.....RAW will have to wait a bit!

I certainly don't mean to hijack the thread.....just a quick question....:o

[msbrad]

Colleen
so glad you adked the RAW question. I do not think I get it per se...and am afraid of it. I guess the next photo lesson I have will be to test the waters there.
I also do not get the whole wb balance thing and changing of it. Afraid of that too, i suppose!
and this may be a real dumb question, but I am a florida gal...does temperature affect the picture??:confused:
Not trying to get off topic...just don't understand and have not heard about that one.
Still trying tolearn where I can.
m

[LeeOtsubo]

The easiest way to set CWB is to set your lens to Manual Focus (so it doesn't need Focus Confirmation to fire), point it at a white sheet of paper so that the center reticle (circle) of the viewfinder is filled by the paper and release the shutter. It doesn't matter where your WB control is set at this time. That determines your reference point. Now, set the camera to CWB and select the white paper you just shot. That tells the camera to use that image as the reference point. Your camera is now set for to match the color temp of the stadium lights. Instead of carrying around a white sheet of paper, a white (bleached) Melitta coffee filter or Pringles can lid works just as well).

An simpler but less accurate way is to take a photo in one of the WB Presets (Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Fluorescent, Incandescent, etc) and eyeball for correct color tone. I don't recommend this unless you have plenty of practice. HTH.

[Ric Cisson]

Nice simple instructions Lee, I could not have explained it better. My students carry around with them, in their lesson on white balance, a 3x5 index card. Not obtrusive and fits in shirt pocket or back pocket as some like to do.;)

[sgeed4]

Gary,
The consensus seems to be that you should choose raw or jpeg depending on your need/preference. My 5-cents worth is if i had it to do over i wouldn't waste one clik on jpeg.
I bought my first digital (D70)) in May of '04 and for the first year shot exclusivly with jpeg. I was both afraid of raw and also didn't know the kind of quality I was missing. We took several trips that year and now when i go back to look at those several thousand cliks in jpeg, I end up kicking myself.
Raw is easy, fun and oh so excellent. The primer-style books are plentiful and inexpensive. Give it go! :)

[OFD678]

I fine that RAW is just not worth the hassles. I know many profossional photographers that only shoot in JPEG. It simply takes more time, space and effort. I have found for me...just not worth it for me. Nothing is worse than trying to preview 100 NEF files.

Brent

[PaulH]

Do you want the camera to be the final say on factors such as:
WB
Sharpening
Contrast
Saturation
????????????

All these are determined by the computer within the camera. If you are satisfied with that - shoot JPEG. Otherwise RAW.

DO you shoot 100's of shots and use them all - or shoot hundreds of shots and keep a few?

You also have the latitude of exposure by a 1/2 a stop or so.


I look at like this - if it was film - would I want WalMart to do my color processing or myself?

[LeeOtsubo]

Nice simple instructions Lee, I could not have explained it better. My students carry around with them, in their lesson on white balance, a 3x5 index card. Not obtrusive and fits in shirt pocket or back pocket as some like to do.;)
Thanks Ric, when I taught at the college level, I learned the "KISS" principle applies to everything from Remedial English to Advanced Theoretical Physics. I try to apply that to all my photography workshops.

I like the 3x5 card idea but if you're like me, you've probably had students who used a colored index card and couldn't figure out why their WB was off. LOL

[mom to 4]

Oh, Boy!!!! Ric, you said that Lee really explained that well, and I am sure he did....I can understand some of it, but you must keep in mind that I am the second "S" in the KISS rule!!!!

Ok, I've been taking all these football pics........games are at night, granted it is getting darker earlier. I had no problem until last week. 99% of my photos had a pink cast to them. Someone mentioned white balance may have been my problem. I read that a redish cast is a cold/cool cast (surprised me as I would have thought blue). Therefore, I assumed, yeah, I know the drill ...never assume, as it makes an a@@ out of you and me.... that it was because the camera was probably cold at the game. I have heard about the WHITE index card deal....one of my books has a set in it. But, I am not sure when I should do that.....at the game, because of the lighting???? Will I be able to recognize the redish cast on that little screen?????

I will post a picture to give you an idea of the redish cast.

Thanks guys!

[mom to 4]

Here is one straight from the camera. Those pink uniforms are supposed to be white ..... except for the dirt. I need to be careful with changes, as our uniforms are supposed to be more of a purple color (althought they appear closer to blue) and I don't want them to look to blue!

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1Yvy4xY8M2aHqXurc70LONZ41TyuhE1_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Yvy4xY8M2aHqXurc70LONZ41TyuhE1)

Here it is after I used the auto color cast correction, personally, I think the greens are a bit to green, but I don't feel comfortable...yet... going into the increase/decrease reds, blues, greens, etc:


EDIT: I am using a Canon Rebel XT

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1lpGjSwYj4osIO0DQPcEFpowI8Tps10_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1lpGjSwYj4osIO0DQPcEFpowI8Tps10)

[Ric Cisson]

Lee, in the years that I have been teaching, I have learned to expect the unexpected, that is why I review, review, review, so they benefit from others mistakes before they go out and do it themselves. But, so far, as you elude to, the colored index card has not reared its' ugly head. My students really like the index card idea.

I would just like to chime in on the debate of RAW vs Jpeg if I may. Every micro processor in every camera is different from one another in some form or another, no two are alike. Jpeg from your camera is a file that your cameras microprocessor has "developed" much the same as you sending me a roll of film to process and develop and return the prints to you. You have no control other than the camera default parameters or the parameters you yourself set within the camera (and this applies to 100% of the DSLR owners). The RAW file is that "unprocessed roll of film" that you yourself process within ACR here in Elements. You have total control over the developing of that particular "Digital Negative" before you go to the final editing process and print/sharing. Whether one can say one is better than the other is really a matter of preference. Does one print better than the other. As a lab operator, I can honestly tell you that one does not see any obvious differences up through 24 X 30 here. However, and I emphasize however, "overprocessing" a RAW file can destroy an otherwise very good image. By over processing I am addressing things like sharpening, over color and tone correcting, contrast and saturation, since many of these features are part of ones "normal" workflow in PSE which is outside of ACR. So do I see a difference in RAW vs JPEG. Depends from image to image. RAW does better in high contrast, if the photographer "processes and develops the Digital Negative correctly", it also does better in subtle color corrections due to light temperature, and RAW does better has far as low light imaging than does JPEG. Now that is what I see, that is what my staff sees and we are just one lab of many and you may find differences across the country or around the world. It is really a personal decision. I personally and professionally shoot everything in RAW. I believe in it, because I want that control in the developing process. Are my images better than those taken in JPEG? Not necessarily. If you are shooting an event and time is an issue, yes you would want to shoot in JPEG. But if you are shooting a wedding, the debate becomes interesting. I would say about 50% of the Wedding Pros that use our lab, shoot RAW and they process themselves and when they are ready to print proofs they come to us with their "processed files" and everyone is happy.

I only wanted to share with you because this debate will go on forever. It is in your best interest, if you have the ability to capture RAW to sit down and "play" with the file. Then you can best decide. I would like to encourage everyone, if you have been afraid to this point to "test the waters" to at least try one image to get a feel of the "control" in process and developing your Digital Negatives, much the same as I have been developing your roll film for nearly 50 years. Who knows, it might be fun!!!!!:cool:

[Ric Cisson]

Colleen I see you just posted a couple of images, you might try setting levels and maybe desaturate a bit. Do you know what parameters you have set in your camera, you can verify within your camera menu under parameters. It looks as though your color setting is set unusually high for your camera. I have seen this in the Digital Rebel, the XT and again in the XTi locally because people are trying to make the Red Rocks here in Sedona stand out.:rolleyes:

[Codebreaker]

Colleen....

Something for you to try.....which is similar to getting the white balance correct after the event.

1. Add a Levels adjustment layer.
2. Double click on the Set White Point Eyedropper
3. In the Colour Picker window that pops up set R=G=B to 245 - just off white. Click OK
4. Then put the mouse cursor on something you know to be white - try the lightest part of the left thigh (his left) of the uniform on #23. Click. Colour Cast should be fixed.
5. Use Midtone Level slider to tune image to what you like

Colin

[LeeOtsubo]

Here is one straight from the camera. Those pink uniforms are supposed to be white ..... except for the dirt.
Colleen,
Those are small images but it looks like a WB issue to me. BTW, when we say, "temperature" we mean color temperature, not air temperature. Also cool generally means a bluish tone as opposed to warm which means a reddish tone. Did they start using the field lights about the time you noticed the pink cast?

Send me a PM with your email address and I'll set up a short 20-30 minute tutorial on WB over the 'net. It's essentially the WB segment of my Digital SLR for New dSLR Owners Webcast. We'll step through WB, AWB and CWB so you know how to set it correctly. It's a real-time lesson so that means I'm on the other end and you can ask questions about parts you don't understand.

I'm teaching 3 classes at Scrapbook Expo in Ontario, CA today and tomorrow and 3 more the following week in Sacramento so the Webcast will have to wait til the week of Nov 6. Hope you can wait or maybe someone else can explain it better in the meantime.

[carlostex]

I recently took a 2 week trip to Colorado shooting landscapes at the peak color of the aspens. For the first time, I shot everything in RAW format and I am extremely pleased with the results. I found the processing pretty simple after a few images. I mainly made small changes to WB and exposure. In some challenging light situations I made some bigger changes to these settings. I did not sharpen in the RAW processing, leaving that for my final images. I saved the images I liked the best into TIFF files. I converted and resized the .tif files to JPEG when I emailed them or put them in my gallery on the internet. I still have the TIFF files for when I want to make prints.
I still shoot youth football and other activities that I don't plan to make quality prints from in JPEG.
Carl

[mom to 4]

Hello guys!! I have printed off your responses so I can read them in more depth......

Ric: What I find really interesting is that I have never changed the white balance setting. It's always been on auto. These were taken at our home field. Why would these turn out differently than the ones I took the week before??? That has me stumped!

Colin:

I will try that next time (I wish I could say that I won't need to do it again, but......we're talking about me here....) I just went to the Enhance>color correction>remove color cast (hope I got the names right! Some I felt came out really well, others not so well. Some it depended what white I clicked on...helmet, pants, refs pants, white in numbers......all seemed to give me a different correction.

Hope I didn't miss anyone!!!

Thanks for your help....you guys are wonderful!

[NickLewis]

Colleen,

This isn't intended to replace Lee's tutorial but here's a quick explanation of white balance:

1) First off, it is nothing to do with the ambient temperature when you're taking the shot. Discard that idea.

2) The "temperature" used in white balance is a way of describing the colour of the light shinng on your photograph's subject. (A "temperature" is used because of some heavy physics which demonstrates that the colour of light given off by certain objects depends solely on their temperatures.)

3) We need to tell our cameras this, because whereas our eyes & brain can adjust for it, and show us whites as white whatever the "temperature" of the light, cameras cannot. They need to be told the temperature in order to adjust for it. ISO speed doesn't connect with this at all - you choose that depending on light level (amongst other things).

4) Unfortunately, it's a fact of physics that hot objects give off bluer light than cool objects, so blue light has a higher "colour temperature" than red. Think of a piece of metal which first glows red, then yellow/orange as it warms up, and eventually glows blue/white. This runs counter to the longstanding conventional description of red light as "warm" and blue light as "cool". This arises from our everyday experience of hot red fires and cool blue water, and is probably how your confusion arises.

5) We set cameras in one of three ways - directly, by a temperature or a preset (daylight, cloudy, shade, etc); on "auto" where the camera attempts a guess, based on the assumption that overall, your picture averages out to a grey colour; or finally "custom", where you use some grey or white object as a calibration. As Lee has described to you.

6) The big problem with all of this is that it assumes that the light that is shining on your subject can be described properly by a single "temperature". Many light sources can, but some cannot. Flourescent light can be tricky, but the real bugbear is what is known as "mixed" lighting. This is when your subject is lit by more than one light, of different temperatures. Your football match looks as though it may have been like that. There'll have been yellow/orange light from the floodlights, perhaps some blue or even red light from a dusk sky, and to cap it all, a big reflection of green light from the grass. It is then very difficult to get everything balanced off properly.

Nothing's wrong - this is just a very difficult situation to shoot. You improve your chances of being able to correct the colours by good choice of white balance or by shooting RAW, but even that won't guarantee success.

PSE Editor is your friend in these situations because it becomes possible to make fine adjustments to colour, saturation and contrast until you get a result that is pleasing to you, usually because it looks like how you remember it.

A couple of people have posted suggestions on how to do this, and PSE provides various alternative routes. You have to try some of these and find a way that you are comfortable with. But ultimately there's no magic solution, practice is the key to it.

Hope that helps, rather than obscures......
Nick

[mom to 4]

Nick:

thanks for that! Glad to know it is a difficult situation, not ALL me!!! o you think bringing the card with me tonight would help at all??? Maybe I am just better off fixing them later. This is not a game at our field, and the time has been moved to 6 due to weather, so maybe I will luck out, so to speak.

I guess I just don't understand why it worked just fine until last week....unless maybe the lights weren't turned all the way up???? could that be part of it???

Nick....thank you for ALL your help!

[PaulH]

Nick:

I guess I just don't understand why it worked just fine until last week....unless maybe the lights weren't turned all the way up???? could that be part of it???

Nick....thank you for ALL your help!

Have you ever watched when these type of lights are turned on? Some of them take several minutes to come up to the actual final output. Doing this time I'd imagine they are changing color temperature. Until they finalize they probably have all type of strange temperatures.

Some my also stabilize before others leading to a mix of colors.

RAW would let you correct easier afterwards.

[Ric Cisson]

Colleen,

I downloaded both of your examples (before and after). And one thing I noted was oversaturation in your correction and over saturation of what appeared to be red and cyan, which when you add the two together is magenta in your uncorrected version. I tend to lean in the direction, not so much immediately toward white balance, but more toward your selected parameters. Again Colleen, bear with me here, as I posted earlier, here at the lab I have seen similar "shifts", if you will, in color balance and it hasn't been because of white balance setting, but several have been parameters selected. When I see super saturated colors coming out of a camera straight into my printer via the kiosk, I know it is not us, and at least 75% of the time it is because, the photographer, has adjusted his or her parameters to add saturation into the color processing within the cameras microprocessor. I know and understand that this may all sound Greek to you, but have you checked your camera's Parameter setting to see what you have selected? If in fact you are utilizing the cameras auto white balance feature, then I would eliminate that, again based upon personal and professional experience at the counter, and zero in on your parameter setting until you can actually eliminate the parameter as probable cause. I think right now, you need to pull the reigns in all the good advise you have recieved on this thread and look at this other possibility. If we can eliminate the parameters, then I would say that you could possibly have a CMOS problem, and again that is based upon experience with what we deal with day in and day out at the lab. I only know of one CMOS failure that has passed through our lab in the past couple of years on any of the Digital Rebel generations and that was on an original Rebel. I have not seen or heard, nor even read any CMOS problems with the XT/XTi to date. Before you go into a panic over the CMOS, take a time out and review your cameras settings to be sure nothing was accidentally changed in any of the settings.

Apologize for not responding sooner, but I have to work before I can play.:D

[malcom]

What little shooting in RAW I have done I must say I like as I find less after adjustments are needed when compared to shooting in jpg.

When it comes to correcting colour casts I will not now touch elements auto colour corrections with a ten light year barg pole as they are next to useless compared to using levels.

To reduce a red cast in levels just increase the blue and green levels in equal proportions....

[chas3stix]

Colleen,
Paul is right -on the money about the lights and the colors they give off as they heat up.
Also different types of lights give off different colors. Sodium lights have a pinkish hue to them whereas mercury vapor lights have a blue-green tint to them. Mixed lighting is a sports photographer's biggest nightmare.
Chas

[OFD678]

One of my biggest complaints in shooting in RAW is trying to preview the picture in Bridge. When I shoot in JPEG I can go into Film Strip mode and get a nice full, big picture to preview. But, when it is in RAW (NEF files for me) Bridge does not give me the full view. It is smaller and more difficult to see the picure. I shoot mostly sports in continous mode and I just like to preview without opening every single picture at once.

Is there a way to over come this by changing a setting?

I would never argure that JPEG is a better picture, just making a point that workflow is important and I guess I have not become very efficient working with RAW workflow.

Thanks
Brent

[Edmund]

There is so much good stuff on this thread that what more could I contribute. I also recently bought a new Nikon D-80 and just love it. This is my first digital camera. I have a few other Nikon's film format and shoot primarily Slides (Velvia). A good friend of mine is a freelance professional advertising photographer and he recommended JPEG and said Raw was a over kill. In the beginning I used auto modes etc. Now I shoot mostly RAW in manual, aperature or shutter preferred modes. The few extra steps needed in the RAW dialog box does not bother me at all. In fact it has helped me to better understand the Digital Darkroom and better yet it has helped me take better pictures ie my WB and exposure and other variables are much better. I look at the histogram and can imediately see blown out highlights, WB, Deep shadows or lost data. Then I just reset some settings and shoot another picture and end up with a better image. There has not been too much traffic about Raw Shooting on these forums so I tracked down a fabulous book "Gettin Started With Camera Raw " By Ben Long , Peachpit Press. It covers both PS and PSE. It is very easy to read and convinced me that my Raw file is my unaltered digital negative. A JPEG file has been altered ,compressed and data is lost forever. By the way if you want to use PSE to process the Raw file then you will need a plug in downloaded from Adobe which will include the new Nikon D-80 called (I believe) Camera Raw beta version 3.6. Buy the book its well worth the price. PS I don't believe in using any in camera adjustments for whatever reason as I can adjust anything I want in the raw dialog box or in PSE-4. I also use 16 bit image in Raw. Good luck,
Eddie

[NickLewis]

Nick:

thanks for that! Glad to know it is a difficult situation, not ALL me!!! o you think bringing the card with me tonight would help at all??? Maybe I am just better off fixing them later. This is not a game at our field, and the time has been moved to 6 due to weather, so maybe I will luck out, so to speak.

I guess I just don't understand why it worked just fine until last week....unless maybe the lights weren't turned all the way up???? could that be part of it???

Nick....thank you for ALL your help!Hi Colleen,

Sorry I didn't reply. The time difference caught up with us. You'll have been to your football match by now.

I hadn't picked up on the fact that you had been shooting this sort of event OK until last week. As that's the case, then my thoughts are:

1) The lighting conditions may have been slightly different previously. We're well into October now, the time of sunset is changing quite rapidly, so the sky may have been different, and the lights on for a different length of time. As Paul has posted, some lights change dramatically in colour temperature as they warm up.

2) You've changed some other setting in your camera. As Ric points out, there is oversaturation in the corrected version. This may be an artefact of the correction algorithm, though, as the uncorrected version isn't particularly saturated. Check all your other settings, and return them to their defaults, especially Parameter. Parameter is Canon's pre-packaged set of presets for colour, contrast and saturation. I think that on an XT, it defaults to Parameter 1, which is the more saturated option, so you can't have made that worse by choosing Parameter 2. But you could if you've been investigating Custom Parameters, I think. Or playing with WB shift. (I don't touch Parameters on my 20D, because I shoot entirely in RAW. But that's for another day........)

3) There's a fault in your camera. This is WAY down on my list of things to worry about. It's much more probable that either you've mis-set something, or that the lighting conditions were just awkward.

However, to eliminate the possibility, put your camera in one of the Basic Zone modes (i.e. the ones with the little pictograms), and go and fire off some frames of general everyday subjects. Do this in daylight, not under artificial light, and try and include a variety of colours and tones. Don't just shoot a field of grass, or some lovely autumn foliage (I should say Fall, shouldn't I?;)), because the predominance of one colour will confuse the camera. If these come out properly saturated and without a colour cast, then the chances of there being a fault are very small.

The Basic Zone modes take control of various functions, including white balance, Parameters and ISO speed away from the user. Obviously that limits your creative input to the photographic process, and some people get a bit snobby about them. But if all you want on that occasion is an acceptable snap of your kids playing football, without stressing out about camera settings, then they may be just the job. They have their place even if you're an experienced photographer.

For people still at the learning stage about photography and camera settings, a good strategy can be to use Basic Zone to get a shot in the bank, particularly of family events, and then experiment with the more advanced auto exposure modes and settings to learn how the camera works.

Nick

[NickLewis]

Colleen,

Here's your photo reprocessed:

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1Hy2CCepuA88mYsa2xAdTU6yUsNr8F_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Hy2CCepuA88mYsa2xAdTU6yUsNr8F)

All I have done with it is three things;

1) Used Image>Enhance>Adjust Color>Remove Color Cast, clicking on No 23's mid-thigh. (Make sure the eye-dropper is not set to "Point Sample", by right clicking. If it is, results can vary dramatically depending on exactly which pixel is underneath the dropper.)

2) Used Image>Enhance>Adjust Color>Adjust Hue/Saturation. I just selected Green from the dropdown, and backed off the Saturation slider a bit

3) Used Image>Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows & Highlights, and just lightened the shadows a little

Notice that parts of the white uniforms are now white, but parts aren't - they still have a slight pink cast. I can actually see a slight difference between the shadow and lit areas of 23's right leg, which is obviously all exactly the same colour fabric. This is symptomatic of mixed lighting - the bright areas are being lit by one colour of light, and the shadows by some other source. I can see a touch of mauve in your team's strip, but whether it's enough, obviously I don't know. If there is mixed light, then it may not be possible to correct that by a global correction without ruining the whites. You'd have to make selections and correct those. A lot of work.

(Incidentally, the fact that a reasonable image can be produced by such "simple" corrections makes me even less worried that your camera might be playing up.)


Nick

[Codebreaker]

Colleen.....

Lots of good advice here.

My own theory...this is not a problem that would be resolved by choosing a different white balance. I think you have a Magenta colour caste caused by the strong lighting and the Green grass.

Magenta is the complementary colour to Green. That is White Light minus the Green is Magenta.

In Photoshop I used the Channel Mixer to boost the Green and the colours balance out but the image is slightly under exposed.

Have fun.

Colin

[NickLewis]

I tend to agree. I think the problem is the wash of green light coming up off the pitch, which Auto WB is trying to balance out, hence turning the white shirts pink/magenta.

A custom WB balance setting might fix it, but the problem will be finding something grey or white illuminated the same way as the players actually on the field. A grey card on the touchline won't have the same powerful green light on it.

Nick