Lightroom Tips & Tricks HomepageLightroom Tips & Tricks

Have Camera Will Travel | David Coleman Photography

  • Reviews & Tips
  • GoPro
  • Places
  • Photos
  • Importing
  • Library
  • Develop
  • Map
  • Exporting
  • Print
  • Plugins
  • Books

How to Use Lightroom’s White Balance Sliders

Lightroom's white balance tools help reduce color casts. They can be used to neutralized any casts or break the rules and create an entirely new look.

Categories: Develop Module
Tags: Lightroom 3, Lightroom 4, Lightroom 5, Lightroom CC/6, Lightroom Classic
Last updated about 1 year ago // Originally published about 3 years ago

As a photographer, you’ll know that not all light is the same color. Well, technically, it’s not a color–it’s a temperature. That’s one of the reasons that photos taken during golden hour look so much better than one taken from exactly the same spot at other times of the day.

For a simple way to visualize it, imagine the warm, inviting yellow and orange glow of a fireplace or golden sunset compared to, say, bright sunshine or the bluish tinge of a cold, overcast day. Our brains do a pretty good job of automatically compensating for these changes in such a way that we don’t notice.

White balance is the term used for adjusting for this in digital imaging. It’s derived from the idea that white provides a good reference point–what’s white in the light of a golden sunset should also look white on a cold, overcast day despite the different lighting conditions.

Modern cameras do a pretty good job of detecting and choosing a white balance in their auto white balance modes. But they don’t always get it right. And even what might be considered the “right” white balance might not be what you’re after–it is, after all, an entirely subjective thing.

There are many times you might want to override the automatic white balance in Lightroom to tweak the look. You might want to make a portrait a little more flattering by warming it up (tilting towards the yellow and orange end of the spectrum) or make a landscape starker by cooling it down (tilting towards the blue end of the spectrum). Or you might just want to dispense with reality and create an entirely new look for the scene.

The white balance sliders in Lightroom are one of the first things you should be working with when you go to develop and image. (Lightroom’s develop panels are designed to suggest you start at the top and work your way down.)

Using Lightroom’s White Balance Tools

As a baseline reference, here’s the starting image with the white balance settings that the camera has automatically calculated. As you can see, it’s done a pretty good job. There’s no obvious color cast in this case even on a heavily overcast day with a number of different tones in the scene.

Lightroom white balance 2

But if we want to tweak the white balance, there are two parts to it.

Lightroom white balance 1

The top slider relates to the temperature. Slide it left, towards the blue end, and you’ll be making the image cooler. Go too far and you’ll end up with a blue color cast.

Lightroom white balance 7

Slide it right, towards the yellow, and you’ll be making the image warmer.

Lightroom white balance 6

The second slider relates to tint. At left is Cyan.

Lightroom white balance 5

At right is magenta.

Lightroom white balance 4

Using the Eye Dropper

Manually sliding the sliders is all well and good, but there’s another powerful tool in the white balance kit. That’s the eye dropper.

The idea behind this is that you use it a special cursor to select a part of the image that you thing should be neutral white, gray, or black. Lightroom will then use that as the reference point to calculate the shift for the rest of the image to match it.

To use it, click once on the eyedropper icon to pick it up (the cursor will change to it).

Choose a neutral gray, white, or black area that shouldn’t have any color cast. Grays work best. If you choose an area that’s too white or too black, you might get a warning telling you to choose another spot for better results.

The magnifying loupe view you get is helpful for seeing it on a pixel-by-pixel view.

Lightroom white balance 8

Once you click on the spot, the temperature and tint sliders will automatically adjust to whatever settings are needed to neutralize the cast for the spot you’ve chose.

Sometimes the first result isn’t what you want. If so, try again with a different spot.

Resetting the Sliders

If you decide you want to go back to the original settings, there’s a quick shortcut. Just double-click on the “Temp” or “Tint” labels. They’ll instantly revert the corresponding slider back to the original setting.

Lightroom white balance 3

Breaking the Rules

The underlying idea of the white balance controls is to neutralize color casts. But you might not always want neutral. Maybe you want to take it in a different direction. So, by all means, break the rules to achieve whatever look you’re going for.

Worth Knowing

The ability to tweak the white balance settings is most valuable and effective when working with RAW files, but the same tools remain available if you’re working on JPG or TIFF files.

More Lightroom Tips & Tricks:

  • Turning Off the Lights
    Turning Off the Lights
  • How to Select Multiple Photos in Lightroom
    How to Select Multiple Photos in Lightroom
  • How to Delete Rejected Photos in Lightroom
    How to Delete Rejected Photos in Lightroom
  • How to Install Lightroom Presets
    How to Install Lightroom Presets
  • Can Lightroom Find Duplicates?
    Can Lightroom Find Duplicates?
  • How to Resize Thumbnails in Lightroom's User Interface
    How to Resize Thumbnails in Lightroom's User Interface
  • How to Rename a Lightroom Catalog
    How to Rename a Lightroom Catalog
  • How to Convert the GPS Coordinates in Lightroom's Map Module to Decimal Format
    How to Convert the GPS Coordinates in Lightroom's Map Module to Decimal Format
  • Lightroom 3.6's Much Improved Recovery Tool
    Lightroom 3.6's Much Improved Recovery Tool
By David Coleman

Last updated on February 5, 2020

Categories: Develop Module Versions: Lightroom 3, Lightroom 4, Lightroom 5, Lightroom CC/6, Lightroom Classic

I may earn a commission for purchases using links on this page. Learn more.

Popular Posts

  • How to Resize Photos in Lightroom Classic
  • How to Make a Contact Sheet in Lightroom
  • Using Lightroom’s Crop Overlays to Help with…
  • How to Switch between Landscape and Portrait…
  • How to use Lightroom’s HDR Photo Merge

News & Deals

Sign up for the Newsletter!

Get my latest Lightroom tips and tricks delivered right to your inbox.

You can unsubscribe anytime and find the privacy policy here.

Questions & Comments Cancel reply

You have to agree to the comment policy.

David Coleman Photography

I’m a professional travel & location photographer based in Washington DC and traveling all over. Seven continents. Dozens of countries. Up mountains. Under water. And a bunch of places in between. You can find my main site at havecamerawilltravel.com. Or check out what’s in my go-to travel photography kit. Or get in touch here.

Licensing & Prints

Looking for travel stock photos or prints? I might be able to help. You can search my collection here:

If you already have a buyer account with Alamy and would prefer to use that, you can search my images directly here.

Get in Touch

Member

© 2009–2021 David Coleman · Have Camera Will Travel LLC · all rights reserved


Photos by David Coleman. Please contact me for licensing images.
All images are registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.


Privacy & Disclosure · Cookie Declaration · Disclaimer · Terms of Service · Copyright · Contact


Adobe, Creative Cloud, Photoshop, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.


XML Sitemap