Is white balance purely subjective?

[scarin]

Shooting pictures in RAW and doing PP in Photoshop. In trying to get the white balance set I am trying to match the colors by eye. Also trying to get the background color, ie sand bed to the right shade of white. I want the pics to be as true to life, or should i say tank lighting, as possible. Is this how you set white balance? Or is there some objective criteria to use?

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[organism]

What I did was put a white frag plug on the sand bed, white balanced to that and saved it as a setting. Now I just load the setting and instant white balance

 

[IPT]

This is an interesting question. I go by eye. There likely are more sophisticated ways to do it. I know some people will use a know color value on a card and put that in the shot. Still, if that value is "white" (whatever that numeric value may be) correcting to make it "white" in your image would negate the effects of the color cast from the lighting. That would not render an "accurate" color temp because our eyes do perceive the color temp. I am curious to hear what the others have to share about this.

Organism must have been typing at the same time I was. I realize after reading his post that at times I will look for white object and use that as a starting point. Sometimes I like it, sometimes I don't (the outcome of color correction).

 

[Donw]

You throw in a plastic grey card and use it to set a custom WB or use it as the WB PP sample.

Don

 

[Hookup]

I believe since the final product, either in "real life" or "as shot" is always viewed by the human eye, white balance is subjective.

that said, you're asking if it's highly subjective, and i'd think i'd sway to no on that one. As above, getting a gray-card you can set a standard white balance and subjectively play with it from there...