I am very confused as to what is correct white balance. I look at the histogram and it is in a curve as recommended but the  image gets rejected for incorrect white balance.Any ideas please?

Not sure where you are on the learning curve here, but basically correct white balance means that things in the photo that were actually white, do in fact look white in the photo - not bluish or reddish.   It really has nothing to do with the histogram (unless you're looking at individual histograms for R, B, and G).

ONe way to get correct WB is to use a "gray card". 

 

Yes. White balance and Histogram are not the same thing.

I'd add that white balance includes more than just white. It would help to have grey and blacks correct as well.

Histogram is a graphical representation of distribution of image data.

(And now can someone please explain Ohm's Law?    )

Not sure where you are on the learning curve here, but basically correct white balance means that things in the photo that were actually white, do in fact look white in the photo - not bluish or reddish.   It really has nothing to do with the histogram (unless you're looking at individual histograms for R, B, and G).

ONe way to get correct WB is to use a "gray card".

Yes, that part we know, the formula and it works... now explain it. 

I thought it was i*r=e ? Must be an old timer version. Or is it the American Spelling?

Anyway, explaining histograms can somethings be just as complicated. Yes it's right there and it's obvious, but all the graphical representations, in colors or black and white?

A bar graph of a frequency distribution in which the widths of the bars are proportional to the classes into which the variable has been divided and the heights of the bars are proportional to the class frequencies.

Next class, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and how it affects photographic exposure. (but I'd only be guessing?)

Quote from: Uncle Pete on December 13, 2013, 00:53

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(And now can someone please explain Ohm's Law?    )

I studied that law

u=i*r

There are 2 white balances in a photo:

One that makes true white, so there is no colour cast.

another that makes exposure correct, THAT is the histogram.
So if the histogram is wrong, the whitebalance is also wrong, it could be lighter and darker or anything.
But the histogram does not show if the image has a colour cast.

So first adjust the histogram, to get exposure right.
Then set the white spot in the picture.

All that, of course, conflicts with " being true to light" and "seeing the light" and all that. Do you wish to capture light as it is, or do you want to capture the object as it should be?
That is a decision you will have to make in every photo. We stock photograpers are often loyal to the product, but the most interesting photos appear when lean to the side of the light, and especially when there is a whiteballance conflict, such as a redly lit pumpkin in a blue halloween landscape.

If you take a close (very close) look at Monets water lillies, you will find that every leaf has a white ballance conflict, between cold purple and warm yellow.

In my opinion there's no such thing as correct white balance, only differences in opinion as to what it should be. I often use it as a creative control - maybe making a snow picture a bit cooler to emphasize 'cold' or a people picture warmer to emphasize 'happiness'. It's a psychological effect and I only bump it a bit.

If the inspector commented on your white balance, his opinion is probably significantly different than yours. Personally, I would take the coaching and give him what he wants. You might also consider that your monitor may be calibrated differently than his.

White balance is reflected in the RGB histogram and the histogram will change when you alter the white balance. I don't know of any histogram controls you could use to specifically control white balance.

Winner! Although all the answers are correct, this explains Histogram RGB balance. Is that white balance or grey balance?

Some things if you expose with the correct colors, will get rejected because the reviewer will expect White - Whites and the object is actually off white.

And continuing the color temperature ideas a real easy way to make things warmer is set the color balance for cloudy on a Sunny day. In the end, it's one more tool and adjustment that I'd say is the property of the artist to set as he/she wants it.

If you have anything that is any shade of pure grey in your image you can check the WB by looking at the RGB colour balance for that thing. Each of the channels should be the same intensity, then you know that the WB of that object is neutral.

White balance is a kind of nonsense invented by digital photography and not understood correctly by microstocks.

Take a picture of a room, with yellow walls, where there is, in the middle, a white object.
The reality is that the white object will normally appear yellow (and it is right like this).
The distorted reality of microstocks is that the white balance is incorrect���

Do you really think that clouds are white??

The crow on park bench was ok but the one on ground not.

I think you are making a mistake in "trying to get the histogram even". It all depends on what sort of light was around at the time and what colour the subject is, histograms are not "one size fits all". 
Also, a crow on a big patch of ground with nothing else to it is likely to have a reviewer looking for a reason to reject it. What use would that picture be to someone wanting to send a message in an advert?

white balance is like putting salt & pepper on your dinner food- everyone has a different opinion! Yeah, the recipe calls for a certain about but the best cooks seldom follow the written recipe.