This article is about the process applied to still images. For the equivalent process applied to video, see Color grading.
The left half shows the photo as it came from the digital camera. The right half shows the photo adjusted to make a gray surface neutral in the same light.
In photography and image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors). An important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colors – particularly neutral colors like white or grey – correctly. Hence, the general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance. Color balance changes the overall mixture of colors in an image and is used for color correction. Generalized versions of color balance are used to correct colors other than neutrals or to deliberately change them for effect. White balance is one of the most common kinds of balancing, and is when colors are adjusted to make a white object (such as a piece of paper or a wall) appear white and not a shade of any other colour.
Image data acquired by sensors – either film or electronic image sensors – must be transformed from the acquired values to new values that are appropriate for color reproduction or display. Several aspects of the acquisition and display process make such color correction essential – including that the acquisition sensors do not match the sensors in the human eye, that the properties of the display medium must be accounted for, and that the ambient viewing conditions of the acquisition differ from the display viewing conditions.
The color balance operations in popular image editing applications usually operate directly on the red, green, and blue channel pixel values,[1][2] without respect to any color sensing or reproduction model. In film photography, color balance is typically achieved by using color correction filters over the lights or on the camera lens.[3]
^Phyllis Davis (2000). The Gimp for Linux and Unix. Peachpit Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-201-70253-8.
^Adobe Creative Team (2000). Adobe Photoshop 6.0. Adobe Press. p. 278. ISBN 978-0-201-71016-8.[need quotation to verify]
^Blain Brown (2002). Cinematography: Theory and Practice : Imagemaking for Cinematographers, Directors, and Videographers. Focal Press. p. 170. ISBN 978-0-240-80500-9.
In photography and image processing, colorbalance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors)...
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harmonious way. The theory of color includes the color complements; colorbalance; and classification of primary colors (traditionally red, yellow, blue)...
other colors of light. This variation in the differential color output will change the colorbalance of the display, and is much more noticeable than a uniform...
contrast, color, saturation, detail, black level, and white balance may be enhanced whether for motion pictures, videos, or still images. Color grading...
the colorbalance of the image to change as the image is faded. Transfer to digital media has attempted to correct the differing colorbalances and is...
colors by shade List of color palettes List of Crayola crayon colors List of RAL colours List of X11 color names Index of color-related articles List of...
mathematical elements of a color space or as irreducible phenomenological categories in domains such as psychology and philosophy. Color space primaries are...
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1970s, color negative film and color prints had largely displaced slides as the primary method of amateur photography. Until about 1995, color transparency...
The RGB color model is an additive color model in which the red, green and blue primary colors of light are added together in various ways to reproduce...
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samples are evaluated. Shirley cards are color reference cards that are used to perform skin-colorbalance in still photography printing. The industry...
methods: a color may be specified as an RGB triplet, in hexadecimal format (a hex triplet) or according to its common English name in some cases. A color tool...
emulsion, and by fluorescent or other artificial light which alters the colorbalance. The capabilities of the process should not be judged by the dull, washed-out...
(CAT) that will make the recording of a neutral object appear neutral (colorbalance), while keeping other colors also looking realistic. For example, chromatic...
chromatic aberration (CA), also called chromatic distortion, color aberration, color fringing, or purple fringing, is a failure of a lens to focus all...
version of the current chosen color from the color slider. Alexis Spectral Data ColorbalanceColor management Color space RGB color spaces Feisner and Reed...
encode gamma. Brightness BT.1886 Callier effect ColorbalanceColor cast Color management Color grading Color temperature Contrast (vision) Image editing...
and other disciplines. Color filters may be applied over a camera lens to adjust its white balance. In video systems, white balance can be achieved by digital...
A color appearance model (CAM) is a mathematical model that seeks to describe the perceptual aspects of human color vision, i.e. viewing conditions under...
of cyan, magenta and yellow light reaching the negative to control colorbalance. Other models have a drawer where cut filters can be inserted into the...
a grid of picture elements, or pixels. These pixels contain the image's color and brightness information. Image editors can change the pixels to enhance...
interfering in the color separation mechanism of a color copier; Colorizing, vary color density and hue by adjusting the exposure and colorbalance controls; Degeneration...
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