There is something seriously wrong with your white balance. If you used the WB dropper, the RBG values in the neutral patches should be equal, while in fact they are far from equal. You should repeat your experiment.
Nope. Not so. As you can see, I clicked on a white patch! In fact, the RGB values change based on which white I WB on. Some more than others. Now if you were looking closely, you’d see I WB on the
first white patch of the Macbeth. The 2nd is a better move. The difference in the rendering is
far from subtle. Yet WB I did. BUT, in your own examples here, you WB on a cloud to produce an “accurate” WB (again, this is nonsense description). Since you seem to feel one can WB on any white, neutral or not, you will see as I did in this example, WB is not ‘
accurate’ and which white you WB plays a big role in getting a preferred (pleasing) rendering. The white patch as measured in that Passport
IS neutral. And yet, WB on that one patch, the result is a warm rendering which is not ‘
accurate’ but more important, not pleasing to me as the image creator looking at the scene and the capture on my display. Had I shot this under candlelight, I may have preferred this warm rendering. If I wished to express the image shot under Solux as candlelight, this image would be fine.
WB is subjective. Why do you suppose a company like X-Rite put a range of white’s with warmth and coolness into the Passport? Accuracy is term that doesn’t belong in the conversation. That’s the bottom line. Your use of the term ‘
accurate’ is misleading. As I said here, you may say you WB and its
accurate and I can disagree. You can say its close, I can say its closer or not closer and its all subjective. You’ve as yet supplied no methodology of measuring scene colorimetry and providing any proof that its accurate to the output referred data you end up with. It matches what you believe is the original, great. Calling that accurate instead of describing this as subjective with no way to back up an accuracy metric should be dismissed.