Monday, 25 April 2016

White balance camera VS white balance software post-processing


Is there a difference between white balance adjustments with the camera (pre processing) and white balance adjustments by software in post processing?


Would I be ok assuming that I can simply use auto white balance and then adjust the white balance later with an image software?



Answer



No. Results are not exactly the same because the camera can work at a higher bit-depth prior to doing the conversion to image color-space. It also operates on linear values rather than gamma ones. Once you have an image you have to do your WB processing using the precision of the image. Even if you could work at the same precision, you would be accumulating errors by doing the transform twice, as if you were undoing Auto WB and then applying the correct one.


Alternately, you can instruct your camera to output a RAW file which you convert into an image. In this case you can work on the same data as the camera can. Still, it is extremely difficult to come out with the same results. You can shoot JPEG+RAW and then try to produce the same output as the JPEG from the RAW to see how difficult it is to achieve exactly the same output.



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