Re: [Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-17 Thread Timo Steuerwald




Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

  On 11/17/05, Timo Steuerwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

  
  
Hey, that's a cool feature! Thanks a lot! I didn't know that up to now,
but anyway: How does this automatical white balance work?

  
  
I don't know how exactly this engine ticks, but I can to to guess: it
searches for the lightest pixel in the image and makes GIMP believe
that it is white and then it shifts other colors appropriately. But
that's my guess. Probably gimp-help package contains information you
want to know.

  

No the official gimp documentation on the homepage doesn't contain
anything about it. You can verify it here: http://docs.gimp.org/en/ch09s07s11.html
It doesn't even appear in the screenshot of the menu.
Your idea how the automatical white balance works sounds good. IMHO the
automatical white balance on a digital camera should work the same way,
shouldn't it?


  Some info on Levels dialog ("Werte" im Deutschen, soweit ich das
verstehe) is here: http://docs.gimp.org/de/ch06s05s06.html

  

Yes, that's correct. Thanks!

Cheers,

Timo



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Re: [Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-16 Thread patman
On Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 01:10:19AM +0300, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On 11/17/05, Timo Steuerwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> > Hey, that's a cool feature! Thanks a lot! I didn't know that up to now,
> > but anyway: How does this automatical white balance work?
> 
> I don't know how exactly this engine ticks, but I can to to guess: it
> searches for the lightest pixel in the image and makes GIMP believe
> that it is white and then it shifts other colors appropriately. But
> that's my guess. Probably gimp-help package contains information you
> want to know.

I'd like to understand it better too, if someone has an actual explanation
or links to documentation, please post (I searched a bit for gimp white
balance ... not much in terms of explanation)).

I think the auto white balance is the same thing as Tools -> Color Tools
-> Levels, then select "auto", but you have flexibility with the levels
tool.

It looks like the auto leveling just sets each color such that they are
evenly distributed, by setting "dark" and "light" tones (that is what the
help menu calls them) such that they are at the low and high range of where
each  color shows up. Just play with it some and you can see what I mean ...

Read this for a good explanation on using the level tool:

http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/gimp_tutorial/levels_curves.html

Try auto leveling, and then look and play with the setting for each of the
three *color* channels (i.e. not the default "Value" channel, auto does
not modify it). I'll often adjust the values towards their original values
in order to get more accurate colors.

This must be similar to in-camera auto white balance.  And even the
in-camera auto white balance is sometimes wrong (and probably why you are
trying to fix this in gimp ... or maybe you picked "sunny" white blance, and
forgot to switch when moving indoors under incandescent light).

It would be nice if there were gimp level settings like "cloudy",
"tungsten" etc., like we have for dcraw, but I guess those can only be
applied to raw images (or to images with no modification to their white
balance), else it would be somewhat a useless.

-- Patrick Mansfield
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Re: [Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-16 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 11/17/05, Timo Steuerwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Hey, that's a cool feature! Thanks a lot! I didn't know that up to now,
> but anyway: How does this automatical white balance work?

I don't know how exactly this engine ticks, but I can to to guess: it
searches for the lightest pixel in the image and makes GIMP believe
that it is white and then it shifts other colors appropriately. But
that's my guess. Probably gimp-help package contains information you
want to know.

Some info on Levels dialog ("Werte" im Deutschen, soweit ich das
verstehe) is here: http://docs.gimp.org/de/ch06s05s06.html

Alexandre
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Re: [Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-16 Thread Timo Steuerwald

Alexandre Prokoudine schrieb:


On 11/16/05, Timo Steuerwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 


Hi all,

can anyone explain how the automatical white balance works? - I can not
find anything about it in the documentation. It can be found at the menu
in Layers->Colours->Auto->White Balance. I'm not sure if this are
exactly the right words because I use the german version.
How does this feature know which pixel should be white? - I expected
something like the manual white balance in digital cameras: Pointing and
selecting  an area which should be white, the rest of the picture will
be changed accordingly.
   



Open Levels dialog (Layer- Colour-Levels), click on the right color
picker in its bottom that is in charge for white and then pick a color
that seems to be the whitest one. Changes will apply.

You can also "show" this color levels tool the "blackest" and the
"grayest" dots ;-)

 

Hey, that's a cool feature! Thanks a lot! I didn't know that up to now, 
but anyway: How does this automatical white balance work?


Cheers,

Timo


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Re: [Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-16 Thread Alexandre Prokoudine
On 11/16/05, Timo Steuerwald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> can anyone explain how the automatical white balance works? - I can not
> find anything about it in the documentation. It can be found at the menu
> in Layers->Colours->Auto->White Balance. I'm not sure if this are
> exactly the right words because I use the german version.
> How does this feature know which pixel should be white? - I expected
> something like the manual white balance in digital cameras: Pointing and
> selecting  an area which should be white, the rest of the picture will
> be changed accordingly.

Open Levels dialog (Layer- Colour-Levels), click on the right color
picker in its bottom that is in charge for white and then pick a color
that seems to be the whitest one. Changes will apply.

You can also "show" this color levels tool the "blackest" and the
"grayest" dots ;-)

Alexandre
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[Gimp-user] automatical white balance

2005-11-16 Thread Timo Steuerwald

Hi all,

can anyone explain how the automatical white balance works? - I can not 
find anything about it in the documentation. It can be found at the menu 
in Layers->Colours->Auto->White Balance. I'm not sure if this are 
exactly the right words because I use the german version.
How does this feature know which pixel should be white? - I expected 
something like the manual white balance in digital cameras: Pointing and 
selecting  an area which should be white, the rest of the picture will 
be changed accordingly.


Cheers,

Timo
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