I’ve been, unsurprisingly, taking a lot of pictures of the baby recently. My dad visited a few weeks before the baby was born, and showed me how to adjust the white balance on my camera, and a little of what changing that can do. Pictures of the baby have made it even more clear to me how important correct white balance is to good pictures.

Here’s a striking example:

Here is a photo I took with the default white balance setting:	Here’s that same photo, corrected using Aperture’s white balance “shade” preset:	And here’s the photo I took immediately afterward, with the D5000’s “shade” white balance preset:

What a difference! Adjusting the white balance in post-processing is cool, but good techniques (and good tools) still really matter.