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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhen I started in photography, I tripped over this concept all the time. I went into White Balance Denial: I knew I didn’t get it, so I put it out of my mind , set the camera to Auto WB and just color-corrected my JPGs by instinct. Later when I started shooting RAW, I let the post-processing application figure it out. That usually worked, and if I thought a photo was a little “cold”, I just fiddled with the WB sliders without looking at those weird numbers above them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, there are countless web pages explaining WB; many are excellent sleep aids if you’re on a long airline flight. Even people who understand white balance can’t tell you why it’s called “white balance”! And “color temperature in degrees Kelvin” means even less. Yes I realize it all makes sense when you know the physics ; but let’s skip that and get to what matters for photography. The key point of confusion is that “color temperature” is backwards.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are 2 “White Balance” settings: color temperature, and “tint”. Here, I’m talking about color temperature, because it’s usually the important one. (I’ll get to “tint” in another post).<\/p>\n\n\n\n We all know light can be described as “warmer” or “cooler”; cooler means bluish, warmer is yellowish. Just to be annoying, physicists say that warmer<\/em> light actually has a lower<\/em> “color temperature” – never mind why. Unfortunately, they get their way, so in photography we have to use that totally backwards scale to specify the warm-ness or cool-ness of light, and put a useless”K” after a meaningless number. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mid-day sunlight is about 5600K. Shadows are bluer, with a higher number, around 7500K. A cloudy day is really blue, up to 10,000K. Going the other (warmer) direction, filament light bulbs are yellowish, about 3000K, and a candle is really warm, 1850K.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there’s a number specifying the warm-ness of light. Why do we care? Because the camera needs to know what the light was like, and compensate <\/em>for it, in order to create a JPG with accurate colors and neutral whites. We can tell it, by choosing WB in a menu or by entering a number. Or we can choose “Auto WB” and the camera will determine it on its own, usually pretty well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If we’re shooting RAW and not asking for an in-camera JPG, the camera literally doesn’t need to know the “temperature” (warmness or coolness) of the light. But at some point we’ll want a JPG, and then the color temperature has to be determined. There are several ways: <\/p>\n\n\n\n The camera can measure it<\/strong> at the time of exposure, and embed that value in metadata to be used by the software creating the JPG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The post-processing application<\/strong> (Capture One, in my case) can try <\/strong>to determine WB on its own, by looking at the image data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Use the application’s “set WB” tool<\/strong> and click on something known to be a neutral gray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set the WB<\/strong> manually<\/strong> during post-processing, using a slider, and the software will adjust colors accordingly. Here’s the “Kelvin” slider in Capture One, first set to a low number, than a high one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Um… wait a minute. That slider is backwards<\/strong>. The lower number is closer to the blue end of the scale, the high number is towards at the yellow end. But a higher “color temperature” means bluer light. Why is Capture One turning this around?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s the head twister: when setting white balance, you’re trying to make the colors look “right” by changing the software’s idea of how warm-or-cool the light was when the photo was taken. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Say the image seems cold, too blueish, and you want to warm it up. To do that, tell the software that the light was actually bluer<\/em> when the photo was taken, by setting a higher number. Capture One’s slider is color-coded to show you the effect on your photo.<\/em> You want the photo warmer, so you move the slider towards the warm (yellow) end – which specifies a higher (cooler) color temperature number. Capture One, thinking the light was cooler, then makes the image colors warmer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are 3 versions of a photo, with different White Balance (color temperature) numbers. The middle photo is “as shot” – the camera and\/or Capture One determined the color temperature to be 4605. For the left photo, I changed WB to 4200 – a warmer light, so Capture One compensated by making the colors cooler. For the photo at right, I set 5200, a cooler light, so I get a warmer image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/jimhphoto.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/low.jpg\")
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