Image quality lies in the balance. Setting a custom white balance in the camera will adjust it to compensate for color cast, while still maintaining all of the subtle shades of color that the camera can capture.

If you’re working with a JPEG or TIFF workflow, the best way to get accurate, neutral color is to do a custom white balance in the camera, before you begin your shoot. Without a custom white balance, it’s not possible to adapt for gross errors of white balance.

Custom white balance is especially powerful in a Raw workflow because you can shoot the target anytime you’re working under the same lighting. Setting the in-camera white balance is not required, but it will help improve the previews on the camera’s built-in display, speed up post-production color editing, and provide more accurate software histograms. Plus, having a consistent white point for a set of images will reduce editing time later because there is no need to individually adapt white points for each image.

Setting in-camera white balance varies slightly from camera to camera. For detailed instructions and to fullyunderstand how much of the image area is covered by the target, refer to your camera manual.