Setting white balance so colors look natural

White balance tells the camera which color to treat as neutral. Light sources differ in color: a household tungsten bulb looks orange, open shade looks bluish, and an overcast sky sits somewhere in between. If the camera assumes the wrong kind of light, every color in the frame shifts in the same direction, and a white shirt can look yellow or blue. Human vision adjusts to light quickly, so a room lit by a warm bulb often looks white to most people after a few moments. A camera has no such adaptation, which is why a photo can reveal a warmth that the eye has stopped noticing. Setting white balance close to correct at the time of shooting makes the photo look more like the scene you saw, and it makes later correction easier.

Color temperature is measured in kelvins, and a few reference points help. A candle flame is roughly 1,800 to 2,000 K, a household incandescent bulb is around 2,700 to 3,000 K, and midday sun is around 5,000 to 5,500 K. Open shade and blue sky can reach 7,000 K or more. A lower Kelvin value describes warmer light, and a higher value describes cooler light. When you set a Kelvin value on the camera, you tell it what kind of light is present, and the camera adds the opposite color to cancel it out.

Using the presets

Most cameras offer presets such as Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten and Fluorescent, plus a flash setting. Each preset applies a fixed correction for a typical light. Daylight suits direct sun around midday, Cloudy adds warmth for overcast skies, Shade corrects the blue cast of open shade, and Tungsten compensates for indoor incandescent bulbs. Fluorescent light varies widely by tube type, so the preset may not fully match the light, and you should check the result. Auto white balance works well in many mixed scenes, but it can shift between frames, which makes a series look inconsistent. For a set of photos taken in one place, a fixed preset keeps the color steady from frame to frame. If you change rooms or move between lights, the preset you chose may no longer fit, so glance at the color of a neutral surface after each move.

Setting a custom white balance

A custom white balance uses a neutral target in the scene to give the camera a reference. A gray card or a sheet of plain white paper lit by the same light will do. Fill the frame with the target, choose the custom or preset-measure option in the menu, and capture the reading. The camera calculates the correction from that frame and applies it to the following shots until you change it. Keep the target in the same light as your subject, and avoid letting a shadow cross it, because the reading will be wrong.

Use a truly neutral target. A white wall or a colored shirt often carries a tint from the room or the fabric, and that tint becomes part of the correction. A common mistake is to measure in one light and then move the subject into another, such as from a window to a lamp. Measure again whenever the light changes, or accept that the correction applies only to the original setting. Some cameras let you save a custom reading so you can recall it later for a room you use often. A saved reading is only as good as the light it was taken in, so it helps in a studio with steady lights more than near a window whose light shifts through the day.

Fine-tuning and checking the result

Some cameras let you fine-tune color balance along a green-to-magenta axis and a blue-to-amber axis. Small adjustments of a few steps are often enough. You can also choose to keep a deliberate warm tone at sunset or in golden-hour light, since that warmth is part of the mood, and a strictly neutral correction would remove it. When the light is mixed, for example daylight from a window mixed with warm indoor lamps, pick the dominant source to set the balance and accept that other areas may show a different color. Correction in RAW editing can handle some of these cases later. Skin tones are a useful check. People look natural when their skin reads as warm rather than orange or gray, and a small shift in white balance can change that look a lot. Check faces as well as neutral surfaces, since a correction that makes a gray wall look perfect can still leave skin tones unnatural.

To check the result, look at a neutral area of the photo at full size on the screen, such as a white wall, a gray card or a cloud. If it looks gray, the balance is close. If it looks warm or cool, adjust the setting and take another frame. Compare the image with the scene itself, remembering that the screen's brightness and color can differ from the final file. Shooting RAW keeps the option to change white balance afterward, which makes this check less stressful.

White balance can be corrected later, but starting close saves time. Consistency matters just as much across a shoot. When you photograph a series in one room, such as a set of product shots or a family sitting, pick one setting and keep it for the whole session. Every frame then carries the same color cast, so the set can be edited together with a single adjustment. Switching between Auto and presets from one frame to the next forces you to correct each image on its own, and the small differences between them are hard to hide.