Correcting colour casts

[peterqd]

Monday was a very dull and dark day here but I needed to test the shutter and meter of a Spotmatic SPII I'd rebuilt. I used up a 24 roll of Kodak ColorPlus 200 round the village using a new (old!) S-M-C Takumar 1.4/50 and a Super-Takumar 3.5/35 which doesn't get used very often. The meter and shutter seem to be working fine, but the shots had different colour casts depending on the lens I used.

The 50mm lens gives a rich yellow/red cast, and the 35mm a strong green cast. Why is that? I guess the 50mm may have yellowed, but the green is new to me.

On these shots I've corrected the casts using the grey colour dropper in the Curves tool in CS2, with just one click. I'm quite pleased with the corrections but is this the recommended way to do it? I'm amazed how quick and easy this is.

(The pics are separate files in case anyone wants to experiment)

1 - 1.4/50


2 - 3.5/35

[Orio]

Your results are very good, Patrick.
I don't think there is a "correct" way to do it. All the roads lead to Rome if you know what I mean. You can achieve the result also using levels for the various channels, or by using the colour balance tool, or the individual colour edit...
Or you can use dedicated plugins. The White Balance tool in the Power Retouche Pro suite is very good in my opinion. It offers different solutions and you are likely to find one that matches the need of your picture.

[peterqd]

[Orio]

yes it works with JPG. White balance per se should not be related to RAW: for instance, video cameras have had it since they appeared.