Review on Colour Checker Passport by X-Rite

Now that we have Photoshop classes for beginners to intermediates, it is time to get in to a very important topic in photo editing, which is COLOR. White Balance in Digital photography has a big role for capturing right colour. In our digital photography workshops we cover the White Balance in detail. Here I am just going to introduce a very helpful tool to all level photographer.

First lets see how we can adjust White Balance. There are two techniques for creating right colour,

– Using Raw format and doing post processing to render right colours. These steps are going to be covered in our Photoshop class as well as in our Raw Editing workshop.

– Adjusting the White Balance while taking photos. This is the best practice and saves you lots of time in post processing.

Most of the colour balance tools in the market can be used for adjusting White Balance (Custom White Balance) or being used as reference for post processing.

I have used several different tools and they all work relatively good. There are things that separate Color Checker Passport by X-Rite different from the rest. Here is some of the highlights.

Size and design

It is very small in size, exactly the size of a Passport. It has a nice and solid cover

[singlepic id=274 w=320 h=240 float=none]

Accuracy

It is design by X-Rite and Pantone Color. So you can trust the accuracy of colours.

[singlepic id=273 w=320 h=240 float=none]

Ease of Use

It comes with a very informative DVD that walks you through all different steps. It shows you all new techniques and teaches you how to get the best uses of your investment.

Performance

Color Checker Passport can help you while taking photos by adjusting the White Balance for you as well as a very easy to use reference for post processing in any editing software such as Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Photoshop, Aperture, Capture one Phase One, Etc. The X-Rite DVD shows you how to use its software with Lightroom but you can apply the same steps for almost all the other softwares as well. The only part that works only with Lightroom is Profiling.

Below is a photo that I took using Auto White Balance

[singlepic id=277 w=640 h=480 float=none]

As you see the colour is off, it is cold. Camera could not measure the light temperature properly and that is why I ended up with a cold image. Then I opened the picture in editing software and used the colour reference chart to adjust the colour:

[singlepic id=276 w=640 h=480 float=none]

In next photo I used the grey card that is part of the Color Checker and set the Whits Balance:

[singlepic id=278 w=640 h=480 float=none]

Conclusion:

I highly recommend the Color Checker Passport by X-Rite. as I mentioned before I have used several different tools before but Color Checker is the most accurate and easy to use.

We love to hear from you. If you have any suggestions or questions, feel free to contact us.

Check our Photography classes for more information