Adjusting White Balance

Use the White Balance group to remove unwanted color casts in your images. A color cast is a visible color tint that affects your image. Color casts are usually due to the lighting when the photo was taken. If you are taking photos indoors, you might want to remove the blue tint or remove the yellow tint that indoor lighting can often give.

You can save your settings as a preset for future use.

To Adjust the White Balance in an Image:

  1. In Develop mode, select the Tune tab.
  2. In the White Balance group, do one of the following:
    • Automatically adjust white balance by selecting a portion of the image with neutral gray pixels with the White Balance eyedropper.
    • Manually adjust white balance with the sliders as described below.

You can right-click a slider to reset to the default value.

White Balance Options

White Balance

For RAW images, select one of the following white balance correction options:

  • As Shot: selected automatically. Applies the camera's white balance setting as stored in the camera when the photo was taken.
  • Auto: adjusts the color temperature and tint to settings automatically determined by analyzing the image.
  • Sunny: adjusts the color temperature to 5500K, approximately that of the midday sun.
  • Cloudy: adjusts the color temperature to 6500K, approximately that of a lightly overcast sky.
  • Shade: adjusts the color temperature to 7500K, approximately that of a heavily overcast sky.
  • Tungsten: adjusts the color temperature to 2850K, approximately that of a household light bulb.
  • Fluorescent: adjusts the color temperature to 3800K, approximately that of a fluorescent light bulb.
  • Flash: adjusts the color temperature to 5500K, approximately that of a camera flash.
  • Custom: allows you to specify a specific white balance, by adjusting the Temperature and Tint sliders. You can also hover your mouse over the image until it turns into an eye dropper, and click an area of the image that is a neutral color (gray).

For encodable images, such as JPEGs, select one of the following white balance correction options:

  • As Shot: selected automatically. Applies the camera's white balance setting as stored in the camera when the photo was taken.
  • Auto: adjusts the color temperature and tint to settings automatically determined by analyzing the image.
  • Custom: allows you to specify a specific white balance, by adjusting the Temperature and Tint sliders. You can also hover your mouse over the image until it turns into an eye dropper, and click an area of the image that is a neutral color (gray).

Temperature

Drag the Temperature slider to the left (more blue) or right (more yellow) to select a specific color temperature.

Tint

Drag the Tint slider to the left (more magenta) or right (more green) to match the white balance settings that you selected when you took the photo.

Strength

Drag the slider to the right to increase, or to the left to decrease the white balance adjustment.

Highlight neutral pixels

Select this box to produce a white balance mask over the image. Color neutral areas are represented by a brighter white, while more color saturated areas are represented by darker pixels.

See also: