# blue tint on digital images



## kmobley (Apr 20, 2007)

I am a yearbook instructor at high school and we recently received a gift of an Olympus digital camera and all of a sudden my images have a blue tint. I can fix it in photoshop, but when we have 300 pix at a time, it's rather tedius. How do I check the settings? What's this blue stuff?


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## jaymanson (Mar 18, 2007)

It sounds like a White Balancing problem. I'd guess if it's set on Auto WB, then you'll need to do it manually. Some digital cameras tend to produce that blue tint when left to white balance themselves.

If all of this sounds like a foreign language to you, let us know the exact model of the camera and I'm sure somebody can talk you through it  

Jay


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## kmobley (Apr 20, 2007)

I am still confused. It's an Olympus Evolt E500 40-150mm...I'm reading off the receipt sent in the packaging. Does that make any sense?...I'm an old 35 mm journalist...but am somewhat familar with settings.


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## buck52 (Mar 9, 2001)

in all but the harshest situations auto WB should do OK...

can you post a sample with the exif data included?


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## jaymanson (Mar 18, 2007)

It tells you all about the White Balance functions from page 85 in the user manual. If you don't have that, you can find a copy on the Olympus website. The WB selection button is above the OK button and I believe you change the selection with the control dial on the top of the camera.

Like I said, it's probably set to Auto WB. Try to avoid using this setting and set the WB manually - you'll usually get better results. The blue tint with Auto WB is a common thing to happen in many makes of cameras - I've come across quite a few people complaining about it in the past 

If you're shooting on the fly, using Auto WB can be unavoidable sometimes and you'll need to do some post-editing in Photoshop, but that's OK. If you're setting up in a studio environment to take 300 student's photographs however, it is worthwhile taking a few minutes to set up the camera properly as since the lighting in the environment won't change, you'll only need to do it once at the start of the shoot.


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## buck52 (Mar 9, 2001)

kmobley said:


> I am a yearbook instructor at high school and we recently received a gift of an Olympus digital camera* and all of a sudden my images have a blue tint. *


did the camera take good pictures at first?

maybe you changed a setting without knowing it.

without trying to get into an argument... blue tint or color cast is not uncommon in images that have lots of blue sky but in general the auto WB on newer cameras works quite well.
I am also not against custom setting WB but ... with that camera I would be dissapointed if the auto WB did not work well under normal situations

It would be nice to see a sample... it might reveal alot


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## slipe (Jun 27, 2000)

Your &#8220;all of a sudden&#8221; suggests you might want to set the camera back to its defaults for starters to find out what the problem is. You might try using the search in the PDF manual for &#8220;default&#8221;. Most cameras have a way to put the camera back to factory defaults. That is a fairly sophisticated camera with available WB settings like Kelvin temp, which could cause the photos to tend toward blue if set too high.

There is an Olympus firmware update for the camera that affects the WB. It is a good idea to keep the firmware updated.

I&#8217;ve had a half-dozen digital cameras over the years including an Olympus. They all worked very well in auto WB. I occasionally use manual WB with a white sheet of paper in difficult lighting, but for most shooting auto works fine. Spot metering can sometimes shift the WB by taking a non-representative color in the image. I tend to pre-meter on different parts of an image using spot metering to get a sort of WB bracketing. The E500 will bracket WB and that might be a good option when using spot metering.

Raw completely bypasses your camera WB settings. I have no idea how easy it is to bulk run your conversion software, but it is an option. 

I agree that some samples would be instructive. Try to not strip the EXIF. Photoshop usually preserves the EXIF unless you "save for web".

For the 300 blue shots you already have I would make an action in Photoshop to clear it, then bulk run the action. Often &#8220;Auto Levels&#8221; works for that sort of thing if you don&#8217;t have a version with WB correction or a plug-in. I would probably make my action using selective color if the blue is consistent. Whatever you use, save the originals.


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## lilhomie10 (Jul 15, 2005)

check you dont have a Tungstan lighting effect enabled, i get mad blue pics on my phone with that


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## D_E_H0987 (Apr 17, 2007)

I did not see anyone post this, but it may just be something even simpler than a camera problem.

You didn't say ware you took the pictures but if it was indoors under floresent or carbide lamps such as in a school gym, etc. the lights are actualy not pure white; to our eyes it apears white; because our eyes corect for light variations; but on a camera though, the light is what it is, so since the lighting has a blue tint for floresents and from blue to violet for carbide lamps the images will have a tint to them too.


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