Adobe After Effects White Balance Fix

I had a shot that I recorded with the wrong white balance and it had a very yellow cast to it. After color correcting I got it close but still not perfect. I ran across this http://www.lynda.com/After-Effects-tutorials/Correcting-white-balance-issues/137909/167487-4.html and the very simple technique is quite amazing. I tried it and in 30 second I had a perfectly corrected clip.

Essentially you put a black solid over your clip and add a 'tint' effect to the solid. Turn off the visibility of the black solid so you can see the image below and use the color picker to set the 'map black to' color to something in the image that should be white. You then turn the black solid layer back on and then set the layer mode to divide. The result should give you a much closer image. You might have to try a few different white patches to get the results you want.

You just need to be careful what color you are remapping to white because you can blow out the image somewhat. But playing around with it for a bit I got some great results on some other clips as well.

If you have AE, it is definitely worth checking out.

Alan

FYI, if you own Red Giant Mojo, you can use it to fix white balance by turning off everything and then using the "Warmer" slider. You can go negative to make an image "cooler".

Still - best to get it right in camera ;)

Nice little tutorial. Mojo is a great product as well. Good to have this info in the arsenal regardless.