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Not necessarily, Auto White Balance only selects from the list available in your camera, Daylight, Overcast, Tungsten, Fluorescent etc. it might be,m in fact it's usually the case, that none of them are correct for the colour of ambient light you have.

The filter you mention is only required with film, digital cameras can use any colour balance so filters aren't required.

There are two ways to get accurate colour balance, one is to use the cameras built in calibration with a simple piece of white paper or a grey card which are guaranteed to be colour neutral. Camcorders use this all the time and are usually very easy to calibrate, as different shots should all look alike even if they are taken in different locations and at different times of day or with differing artificial light you need to calibrate on almost every shot, as different colour balances severely limit you when editing, if two scenes are shot with different colour balance any cut becomes glaringly obvious.

The second way is by taking a picture with a grey card held in front of the camera with the ambient light shining on it, then use PS to create a colour profile which can be used in all the pictures in that sequence. This is as simple as using a Levels Adjustment Layer and selecting the Gamma pipette (middle one) and clicking on the grey card, instant colour balance and exposure correction all in one.

Somebody else has already mentioned a wood, in a wood the Red and Blue part of the spectrum are absorbed by the leaves (which is why we see them as green) so there's always a colour cast, your eyes adjust, but you're camera won't. By using a grey-card as above it's amazing the extra detail you can get, here is an example.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2522/3747241700_3318c5b4e5_o.jpg

And two pics one with the adjustment and one without, one above the other.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2586/3746453535_972a5b110f_o.jpg

Colour balance is rarely absolutely correct with most pictures ever taken.

Getting the colour balance spot on can really transform a picture and is needed many more times than you might think.

Chris

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