Curves. Color Balance. Selective Color. Levels. Photo Filters. Those are just a few ways of dealing with troublesome white balance. And they all DO work.

But it can take some doing. Even with our actions (which are awesome, we think) fixing really wonky white balance can be tedious at best.

So what can you do to free yourself from hours of drudgery in Photoshop?

Custom White Balance.

And to be specific, use an Expodisc.

Now we are not being paid or compensated in any way by Expodisc, but it is a product we use ourselves and love. So we wanted to pass this information along to all of those who follow us. But really, WHY would a company that sells actions tell you how to get away with using your actions less? Because we really believe that the cleaner of straight-out-of-camera image you start with, the more the actions can help you achieve your artistic dream, rather than just try and put band-aids on image boo-boos. And we are all about that. We really and truly want your images to be the best they can be in the quickest time possible.

But here is the thing. Read the instructions to the ExpoDisc when you get it. I’ll even give the summary here, just in case. The ExpoDisc is NOT a gray card. Instead is acts more like an incident light colorimeter. So rather than standing where you will be shooting from and taking a CWB shot towards your subject, you will stand BY your subject and point your camera with the ExpoDisc attached at your light source. And then use this as your Custom White Balance setting. It will neutralize the color casts of the light and give you clean, neutral color, which means you images will look like what you saw as you shot them. Skin tones won’t be a maddening process anymore. Now you can just add a little extra warmth or haze or color, a little contrast or pop and boom. Done. You can attend to artistically editing your images, rather than having to go image by image and get the tones normal. Doesn’t that sound fun? (And profitable, since you will not be spending so much time fixing issues.)

We wish EVERYONE could win the giveaway, but for those who don’t, HERE is the link to the ExpoDisc for those who want to purchase one. You dont need one for every lens you have. Just get a big one that will cover any lens and hold it over the lens, snap the shot and then put it away until the light changes. And that’s that!

Do you see that Image above? The top was taken with my white balance set to auto. The bottom was taken with a custom white balance set using my neutral expodisc.