Averaging option for white balance picker
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It would be great to have the option to average the values of surrounding 3/5/11/31 pixels for more accurate white balancing and color selection.
What problem do you see this solving?
It is very difficult to click on the right pixel to have a good sample for white-balancing or get a good color sample. The situation is even worse when using images with higher ISO.
When was the last time you were affected by this lack of functionality, or specific tool?
I have this problem every time I do white-balancing. I also use Capture One Cultural Heritage quite often, and the correct gray sampling is critical there.
Are you using any workarounds or other solutions to achieve your goals in Capture One?
I have to click around several times and visually evaluate the result, which is not satisfactory.
Are you happy to be contacted further about this suggestion or request?
Yes
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I agree - this needs to be addressed. The White Balance picker is frustrating because using it can result in surprisingly large swings in tint and temperature from one pixel to the next due to sensor noise and other unimportant variations. The user needs to be able to select a sample size, perhaps by clicking and dragging the picker tool to create a sampled area, or just set a reasonable default like 3x3 or 5x5. I could see both mean or median sampled value from an area working well, but single pixel sampling is almost never what the user wants or needs.
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Yes, please improve the picker as sugested, with some flexibility to the user, i.e. a configuration or drawing a rectangle or circle. In its current state it is rarely fit for the purpose, only under ideal lighting and noise conditions and with a grey card or similar.
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Can you shoot the grey card/color checker out of focus then refocus for your final capture? I often defocus to shoot scene references if the target I am shooting has any texture. Colorama unrolled in front of a painting etc if on location.
The ability to choose a larger sample with the pickers would be great. Some kind of averaging or smoothing of the scene reference shot before the uniform light calculation would be good too. Users would normally want a gradual correction with this function rather than a pixel by pixel correction (unless using for sensor spot removal)
*Note. I just experimented with 'blurring' the image using negative values for Clarity-Structure which does not affect brightness or contrast. Also setting dehaze to -100 and sampling the square on the Colorchecker Classic I am using with the Haze shadow tone picker so the brightness of that tone isn't changed. This is as blurry I can get the image without changing the brightness of my sample (patch 20 in my case) but when sampling across the patch, the changes in White Balance are as different as with no digital blur added. I guess the White Balance tool is sampling the Raw data?
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I guess the White Balance tool is sampling the Raw data?
That's what I would expect.
Can you shoot the grey card/color checker out of focus then refocus for your final capture? I often defocus to shoot scene references if the target I am shooting has any texture. Colorama unrolled in front of a painting etc if on location.
What about travel photography or other genres where you neither have grey card in your image nor a series of images, not even to speak of blurry images...
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Surely a larger sample would tend towards LESS accurate WHITE balance rather than more accurate?
Why do you think so?
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I think the word "option" here is the key. If you want to pick WB from a single pixel, you could. But in my experience, an apparently neutral area on an image from which you might pick a WB are not always as uniform as they first appear, and the WB you get depends very much on just which pixel the pointer happens to hit on. (Especially so in a noisy image.) So if that difficulty might be ameliorated by an option to pick the average of a small number of pixels, why not?
(The same goes for other colour picking tools such as the colour editor too.)
Ian
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Thanks for the post!
As it is today, the WB picker samples 5x5 pixels, and not just a single pixel like some of the comments indicate.
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Thanks, Alexander.
When you say "as it is today" does that mean that it's changed from what it used to be, or has it always been 5x5?
Ian
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Ian Wilson it was changed in 13.0.0 from 3x3.
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OK, thanks.
Ian
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SFA it was to ensure consistent results when using the picker on a color target, even when some sensor noise is present. 3x3 was too inconsistent, and 5x5 improved the results quite dramatically. When using the picker on a solid color, a larger sample size will always be more accurate than a smaller one.
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As Alexander points out, the bigger the better, on a solid color. That is my experience too, especially if compared to applications which allow a variable sample size.
I pick white balance on white or grey shirts/fabrics, rocks, clouds more often than on a grey card, simply because the type of photography I do, and the results of the C1 picker are rless than ideal (v15.2), not consistent, gives me bluish or yellowisch results quite often and almost every virtually click results in a white balance differing too much from the previous click.
On contrary, the white balance (and color picker) in darktable provides me very consistent(and good) results, it is a rectangle you can draw as big as you like, even full image size, which then works as the auto white balance of a camera, averaging the whole scene.
Bottom line:
If you ask me, and the other users in this thread, C1 is not the gold standard for this matter. For all but grey cards, 5x5 is not enough, but bigger size requires targets which are big enough in the image, so a variable or configurable size would probably be best.
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