Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers

160 Digital Darkroom

Adjusting White Balance

Adjusting White Balance

It’s easy to fix the color temperature of a digital photo

after the fact either when converting a RAW image or

in the digital darkroom. An advantage of adjusting

color temperature during RAW conversion is that the

adjustment merely alters metadata rather than chang

-

in

g the photo itself.

I’ve explained earlier that applying a higher color tem-

p

erature (in Kelvin degrees) for the white balance set-

t

ing to a RAW capture makes the capture warmer (red-

der),

and applying a lower color temperature setting

makes the image cooler (bluer). This is a little back-

wa

rds, because using the Kelvin scale light sources that

are lower in color temperature are redder and warmer

than light sources higher up the scale, which are cool

-

er

and bluer (see the table on page 126). But it’s easy

enough to adjust the white balance of your photo using

this color temperature setting.

You crank the white balance slider up to higher values

for warmer, redder colors, or decrease the values for

cooler, bluer colors. Provided your monitor has been

accurately calibrated (see the sidebar on page 129),

when you like what you see, you are done.

If don’t want to eyeball things, you can include a neu-

t

ral gray card in one photo in a series, and set the white

balance in Camera Raw by clicking on the card with

the white balance tool (see page ...