White balance and colour
Your eyes correct for the colour of light automatically. A camera does not, which is why photographs come out orange or blue.
Light is not colourless. Tungsten bulbs are orange, overcast sky is blue, open shade is bluer still.
Your eyes adapt so completely that you rarely notice — walk from a lit room into daylight and within seconds both look neutral. A sensor does not adapt at all. It records the colour that was actually there, which is why indoor photographs come out orange and shaded ones blue.
The scale
colour temperature is measured in kelvin.
| Source | Approximate |
|---|---|
| Candle | 1,900K |
| Tungsten bulb | 3,200K |
| Sunrise, sunset | 3,500K |
| Midday sun | 5,500K |
| Overcast | 6,500K |
| Open shade | 7,500K+ |
The confusing part: lower numbers are warmer. The scale describes the colour of the light source, so telling the camera “the light is 7,500K” means “the light is blue” — and it compensates by warming the photograph.
Setting it
Auto is good, and occasionally confidently wrong — usually when one colour dominates the frame. A photograph of a red wall may come out oddly green, because the camera assumed the redness was in the light.
Presets — daylight, cloudy, tungsten, shade — are more reliable when you know the light.
Custom means photographing something neutral and telling the camera to use it as the reference. The most accurate, and the slowest.
Correct is not always right
Neutral is a starting point, not the goal. A sunset corrected to neutrality is no longer a sunset; warm firelight corrected to neutrality looks like a fluorescent-lit room.
Correct first so you know where neutral is. Then deviate deliberately.
Mixed light
The genuinely awkward case: a room lit by both a window and a lamp. One correction cannot fix both, so one part of the photograph will always be off.
The options are to turn one source off, to move the subject so one source dominates, or to accept it. There is no setting that solves it.
Key takeaways
- Your eyes adapt to the colour of light and sensors do not.
- Lower kelvin numbers are warmer; setting a higher number warms the photograph.
- RAW makes white balance a decision you can defer entirely.
- Correct to neutral first, then deviate on purpose.
Common questions
Should I set white balance in the camera or afterwards?
Afterwards if you shoot RAW, where it costs nothing to change. In camera if you shoot JPEG, where it is baked in.
Why do indoor photos look orange?
Because tungsten bulbs emit light around 3,200K, which is much warmer than daylight. Your eyes adapt to it and the sensor does not.
Next steps
The first five adjustments
A short, ordered routine that covers most of what a photograph needs, and stops editing becoming an aimless slider hunt.
Daylight through the day
The same sun gives completely different light at dawn, noon and dusk. Knowing the pattern lets you plan rather than hope.