Can Photoshop CS do this (white balance q)

[Adam Hicks]

So I'm on my laptop which does not have Photoshop on it, and I need to crop down an image I shot... the only thing I have is the Microsoft Office Picture Viewer app that does the VERY basics... resize, crop and basic color adjustment. BUT it has an option for color enhance that has you click a crosshair on an area 'that's supposed to be white' and it adjusts the white balance of the image from that point. One click. And it actually does a nice job! (Assuming you have something in your image that is close to pure white.)

I know Photoshop CS pretty well, and often shoot in RAW, but for JPG images it might be nice to be able to click somewhere 'that's supposed to be white' and have it adjust the image white balance. Anyone know if this can be done?

Any ideas are greatly appreciated! Otherwise, what's your most reliable method of adjusting color balance after the fact in CS?

Adam

[mgm]

The levels menu in Photoshop allows you to pick white points, black points, and grey points for color adjustments. Not sure if "points" is exactly the term used but it does a nice job and also has sliders for each of them displayed with a histogram to fine tune each of these. If an adjustment layer is used it can be copied to other pictures by "drag and drop" a real time saver with multiple images from the same source, camera or scanner.

[Dante King]

also by shooting raw and importing, you can change exposure and temp which is pretty good at adjuting the WB before editing.

[scottbergerphoto]

There are two ways to adjust for color casts/white balance in PS, which it sounds like you are talking about.
If you are shooting Raw, adjust the White Balance by selecting one of the canned choices or using the eye dropper, click on an area of white/highlights that still has detail. Do not use grey.
If you are working with a jpeg, in Levels, click on the Grey eye dropper, and then click on some neutral grey area in the picture. Keep trying different spots till you get what you want. This is not the same as moving the middle slider.
Scott

[Flagpole]

G'day!

Not trying to be picky but there is probably 5 or more ways to remove colour casts in PS. You can go from fully automatic: Auto Colour and Variations to Average Blur to manual using levels/curves or Color Balance. "How to Wow: Photoshop for Photography" has a quick overview of these methods. However the most powerful out of these are using manual curves and adjusting for each induvidual color. For skin tones you can refer to this quick overview which will work well http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone For others the golden standart still remain Dan Margolis "Photoshop for Professionals" which covers Color by Numbers technique which in theory is the most reliable as it uses CMYK and other color spaces with hand tweaking of induvidual curves to get the final image. Very labour intensive but if it is "one in a million"it may be worth it. Else there is always ExpoDisk and WhiBal and other aids to help you work with WB on your camera :)

Regards,
Flagpole