Correcting a Baader Solar Film Solar Image

Take a photo with a thin film solar filter and you get a blue-white image of the Sun. Correcting this to a yellow gold image is fairly simple in most any photo processing package.

Baader Film Solar Image
The Sun as photographed through a Baader film solar filter
Correcting is probably the wrong word here. The Sun is actually closer to white as we define color. After all, the Sun is our normal source of light, what our eyes evolved to use.

Color is a fluid subject, simply our interpretation of frequency across a very small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum. As such there is no absolute right and wrong, just a set of conventions we normally use.

The issue is that people expect the Sun to be yellow-gold. Present an image of the Sun in any other hue and it is rejected as fake, or false color. We are accustomed to certain visual cues to identify and interpret our world, color is a major part of that. Unless you want to argue with a million people or two, you are better off making your Sun photos yellow-gold.

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