How to Use a Color Checker Tool for Perfect Colors
Have you ever gotten back from a shoot with difficult lighting and struggled to find the proper white balance? Everything you try just seems off. I know I'm not the only one this happens to from time to time.
As I've grown as a photographer, my eye has grown too. I can spot minor variances in color that I'd have missed years ago, and my ability to white balance has improved significantly. Even still, there are times when I need a little outside help. A cheat sheet of sorts.
That cheat sheet is the ColorChecker.
What is a ColorChecker Tool?
A ColorChecker tool is a physical color reference target. It is a card or "passport" printed with precise color patches, each with standardized values. The idea is simple but also incredibly useful. Even with perfect color temperature in-camera (which almost never happens), the way a camera interprets colors is based on its unique color science. A ColorChecker gives you a fixed, trustworthy reference that you can use to white balance your images with precision when editing.
How to Use a ColorChecker in the Field
Using a ColorChecker is incredibly simple and takes only a couple of seconds to ensure perfect colors in your images from the first shot.
The workflow is straightforward. When you arrive at a scene or set up an image in a given location, place the ColorChecker under the same light that's falling on your subject. Take one reference frame with the target in plain sight, correctly exposed. Be sure to keep the tool facing directly toward your camera. Then remove it and shoot normally; no need to even adjust white balance in camera (unless you are shooting JPEG, but just do yourself a favor and swap over to RAW already).
One of the most important things to keep in mind if you want to rely on a ColorChecker is also its largest downfall, in my opinion. If you move to a different location with other lighting or color casts, it is necessary to reshoot the reference tool. This is where your own personal workflow comes in. Some people like to use it in every frame, but I tend to use it when I know white balance will be difficult to figure out. Often times this is when shooting subjects in a colored room (ever shot in a red room?) or for Airbnbs with difficult or muddy lighting.
How I Use a ColorChecker
As mentioned before, I've developed my eye over years and hundreds of thousands of images captured and edited. I also use Imagen AI to edit my images, which does an incredible job with images captured under consistent, single-temperature lighting, as well as flash to keep one consistent white balance in use as much as possible. It's incredibly rare that I need outside help, but when I do, I'm not afraid to whip out my ColorChecker and make my job easier.
I shoot a lot of Airbnbs and indoor wedding venues that have incredibly tricky lighting. I've shot weddings in red rooms and pine-covered Airbnbs that make white balancing incredibly difficult, even for my honed eye. This is where the ColorChecker shines.
Even in my outdoor, carefully curated and styled work on Instagram, white balancing is of the utmost importance. It's one of the things I emphasize in my video class when I teach people how to use my Moody PNW Preset Pack. Every image has to be perfectly white balanced for the preset to work and for style consistency. Here are a couple of before-and-after examples showing how my images start out and end up. Without proper white balancing and color science, I wouldn't have perfect image and feed cohesion.
Conclusion
While a ColorChecker isn't going to turn a mediocre image into an incredible one, it will sure help ensure that white balance is correct from the beginning. If you have ever struggled with white balance, even rarely, do yourself a favor and pick one of the ColorCheckers up from Calibrite. Calibrite is my personal choice for everything color science and white balance related. I use their passport and especially their monitor calibrator for all my work. They're actually celebrating the 50th anniversary of their ColorChecker this year!
Thank you for reading along and, as always, feel free to leave questions or feedback in the comments below.
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How to Use a Color Checker Tool for Perfect Colors
Written by: Zach Nichols
September 6, 2026
© Zach Nichols Photography