White balance techniques 93outdoor scenes. But some caution is in order: some camera fl ash
settings tend to be warmer than others. All fl ash units, even profes-
sional studio lights, are not consistent from manufacturer to manu-
facturer and may not produce the same color temperature, so this
is not a one-size-fi ts-all solution. Shoot some tests and compare
settings to fi nd the best Color Balance for your fl ash.
When the color isn’t quite perfect and needs just a little help, I
reach for PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab Pro software. It’s avail-
able as a Photoshop-compatible plug-in or as a stand-alone
application, and eliminates the frustration that often accompa-
nies the process of color-correcting photographs. The interface
uses a SmartColor Wizard with four toolsets. As you progress
through the tabs from left to right, the tools will not, and cannot,
affect any tools applied on the left. This step-by-step process
alleviates the frustration of correcting part of the image while
throwing off another. After one pass through the tools, you’re
fi nished. You can save custom settings to apply to other, similar
images individually or as a batch. Color-correction parameters
can be saved as ICC (International Color Consortium) profi les
for color-managed workfl ows.As you can see, the background looks warmer than the background’s true-gray color and the model’s skin
tone is just a bit too yellow, so Joe used PictoColor’s iCorrect EditLab Pro to correct the color. Color cor-
rection is simple: he clicked on the background and it was balanced to neutral. © 2007 Joe Farace.