white balance?

[donwiss]

I have a bunch of images where the photos were taken under fluorescent light and the white paper is rather yellow. I recall seeing a feature in IrfanView where I could set the background to white. But now I can't find it. Where is it?

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Flood fill the background with the Paint Plugin (F12). Set the tolerance to suit the image.

[donwiss]

Flood fill the background with the Paint Plugin (F12). Set the tolerance to suit the image.

But the tool does not fill in the inside of the letters. Unacceptable.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

Your attitude is unacceptable. Check out the forum rules in Before you post ...

If the flood fill tool doesn't work for your image, then use the Colour Replacer instead.

[donwiss]

Your attitude is unacceptable. Check out the forum rules in Before you post ...

If the flood fill tool doesn't work for your image, then use the Colour Replacer instead.

My attitude is unacceptable!? I wrote that the result was unacceptable. The result was a white background with the centers of all lettering, and borders, and some images, a dark yellow. That is an unacceptable result.

I don't see how the Color Replacer works. The tool tip has "click and drag." Drag the white from where?

In the past I found something that did what I want automatically.

[Mij]

Irfanview does not have a White balance tool. You can make some color adjustment with the
Color correction feature in the Image menu but it is probably not what you want in this case.
If you have a yellow cast you can reduce it with the Yellow eye removal tool in Effects > Effects browser in the Image menu. Sounds odd I know but give it a try.

[donwiss]

Irfanview does not have a White balance tool. You can make some color adjustment with the
Color correction feature in the Image menu but it is probably not what you want in this case.
If you have a yellow cast you can reduce it with the Yellow eye removal tool in Effects > Effects browser in the Image menu. Sounds odd I know but give it a try.

I tried it. I couldn't see any change taking place. I tried by highlighting a section first, and not.

Here is one of the images: http://jwissandsons.com/1920s/1925/p08.jpg

I guess I should be looking for a tool someplace other than IrfanView. Just that IrfanView is the only image editing software that I have any familiarity with.

[Al]

Hi Donwiss
One of the wonders of Irfanview is the ability to use photoshop 8bf plugins, so users can customise it to their needs. I suggest you try a free whitebalance Adobe 8BF plugin available on the internet.

[Mij]

I was going to suggest that, Al, but I am not too sure that White balance adjustment is what Donwiss really needs. Fluorescent light usually gives a blue cast. It is the old tungsten lights that make an image look yellow and I believe you then need to correct for Color temperature not White balance.
Donwiss, you spoke of Yellow paper. Did you really mean that? If the paper you are printing on does have a yellow coloration the background will never appear white.

[Jacal]

If I am not completely wrong, correcting colour temperature or white balance is basically the same thing. So says Wikipedia:

"In photography and image processing, color balance is the global adjustment of the intensities of the colors (typically red, green, and blue primary colors). An important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colors – particularly neutral colors – correctly; hence, the general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance, or white balance."

A simple plugin, that offers only clicking area in the image that should be neutral, and nothing else, but works fine with IV, is "Jazzman’s White Balance I", that can be found here, near the bottom:

http://www.westbrookjazz.de/filter/f0.html

I hope this can be of some help, but there are probably some more complex solutions.

Have a nice day!

[jsc37227]

The color corrections tool, shift+G, works quite well at white balance if you notice the hint at the bottom of the dialog. If you click at a light area in the small image presented on the left side of the dialog, IV picks out the color corrections on the sliders. It seemed to work well for me on that image that Donwiss linked in the message above. At least, I thought I was getting a properly colored image after using the tool.

[Jacal]

Ups, I completely forgot about this; the feature was introduced in 4.36 and works as expected. It can also be found in IV Help. Thanks!

[Mij]

Thanks. That's a new feature that I had missed completely.

[donwiss]

Donwiss, you spoke of Yellow paper. Did you really mean that? If the paper you are printing on does have a yellow coloration the background will never appear white.

I wasn't printing on anything. These are photographs of a 1925 catalog in the Smithsonian archives. They would not let me bring in a small scanner and laptop. I hand held the camera over each page. I then cropped to get what you see in the link above.

[donwiss]

The color corrections tool, shift+G, works quite well at white balance if you notice the hint at the bottom of the dialog. If you click at a light area in the small image presented on the left side of the dialog, IV picks out the color corrections on the sliders. It seemed to work well for me on that image that Donwiss linked in the message above. At least, I thought I was getting a properly colored image after using the tool.

I have just returned. Yes! I knew I had stumbled on something in IrfanView that did what I was looking for. I came here as I could no longer find it. Thanks. I will play with it.