PHOTOGRAPHY TUTORIALS & TIPS
Free Photography Tutorials, Beginners to Advanced
color getting it right

Getting the Color Right in the Camera

Getting the color right in your photos can be the easiest thing in the world if you are always satisfied with what the auto settings give you. Which is often quite close to what you want. Going that extra mile though and getting the colors precisely the way you like them can be the most difficult thing in photography.

I have driven myself quite crazy over the years in the quest for perfect color. The quest can be even more heartbreaking when you have to hand your work over to someone else to print. You can look at all the proofs you like but you don't really see the finished colors until you have 10,000 copies piled up in your office and then it's too late to do anything about it.

The most important thing to have when you are on the quest for perfect color is to have a good quality monitor that you can rely on, then make sure you calibrate it properly.

However, the more normal amongst us aspire only to have a few nice photo prints from the inkjet and something that looks good on the screen.

The best way to work is to get as much right in the camera as you can, and keep the after work to a minimum.

With that in mind, here are a group of three tutorials to help you with understanding color temperature, getting to grips with your white balance controls and getting fancy with a gray card.

Other tutorials in this section

Color

Introduction page.

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Color Temperature

An introduction to the color temperature scale.

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White Balance

How to set up your camera's manual white balance.

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Gray Card

Using a gray card for color balance and exposure measurement.

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Color Space

Ever had the problem of washed out colors, either on a print or on the screen? The chances are the reason for it is that you're using the wrong color space.

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