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enter image description hereI've attached an example photo. I can't seem to get the colors to be consistent across shots without struggling to manually tweak each image. What can I do to get a consistent White Balance?

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  1. Don't use auto white balance - choose a color temperature that looks well and stick to it (or use a gray card if the color accuracy is important)

  2. Close all the windows - the daylight color changes based on weather, if possible use only flashes and photographic color balanced lights, if you must use normal indoor lights try not to change light bulbs, if you must choose another bulb that is exactly the same as the one you replaced.

  3. If you are using fluorescent lights, use only shutter speeds 1/60, 1/30 or 1/15 in the US and 1/50, 1/25 or 1/15 in Europe - fluorescent lights blink, the blinking rate is the AC power frequency (60Hz in the US, 50Hz in most of Europe), the color and power of the light is only consistent if your exposure covers complete cycles (I wrote about this on my blog a while ago here)

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  • I suppose that the "indecent" light you talk about in the blog is a typo for "incandescent"... ;-)
    – Rmano
    Jun 10, 2014 at 21:31
  • @Rmano - well, "indecent light" does seem to belong in a different kind of web site
    – Nir
    Jun 11, 2014 at 7:25
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A simple way is to use the dropper and select a light grey area that is consistent color in each shot. This should produce the same white balance as long as light wasn't reflecting differently on the object in each shot.

For example, in this shot, I'd probably try the right hand side of the jug.

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Shoot RAW and take a reference shot with a white-balance card, such as a whibal or regular gray card, and then in post, use the eyedropper on the reference shot, and sync the white balance between all the shots.

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To get consistent white balance, use a neutral gray or white reference target. If you want to have color consistency (and realistic colors), use a color target, then create a color profile in Lightroom, etc. and correct the photo colors using that profile. You have to create a new profile for each new lighting condition.

I use a ColorChecker Passport, it is a very compact and useful tool.

More information is available here.

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