White balance overview

White balancing is the process of adjusting the colors of an image so that white objects in the field of view appear white in the image. This process makes a more color-realistic image without color tints caused by lighting.

If you intend to have your project running without any updates to the WhiteBalance step at runtime, use the DEFINE WHITE BALANCE tab from the TOOLS portal page to set up white balancing. If the project is more dynamic, you can add a WhiteBalance step to your flowchart. Alternatively, you can create a white balance flowchart button in the operator view, which will execute a flowchart that uses the WhiteBalance step. For more information about executing flowcharts, see the Events and actions section in Chapter 2: Building a project.

In the project, the Camera tree item in the Platform Configuration dialog lets you select the white balance files that you have saved. The saved white balance files can be accessed on your runtime platform under \ProgramData\Matrox Design Assistant\ 6.0 \Calibrations.

To perform white balancing with a GigE Vision or USB3 Vision camera, the pixel format must be set to a Bayer format (for example, Bayer RG 8). To set the pixel format for your camera, use the Feature browser, accessible from the Cameras page of the Platform Configuration dialog.