White Balance and Colour Temperature: Fixing Yellow and Blue Photos

Have you ever taken a photo indoors and found everything looked orange, or a shot in the shade that looked blue? That's a white balance problem, and it's one of the easiest to fix.

What white balance is

Different light sources have different colours. Candlelight and old bulbs are warm and orange, sunny midday light is fairly neutral, and shade or overcast skies are cooler and bluer. Your eyes adjust automatically, so a white sheet looks white under every light. A camera has to guess, and it sometimes gets it wrong.

White balance is the process of telling the picture what "white" should be, so that everything else falls into place.

Colour temperature

Light colour is described in kelvins (K). Lower numbers are warmer, and higher numbers are cooler:

• Candlelight: roughly 1,800 to 2,000 K
• Household incandescent bulbs: roughly 2,700 to 3,200 K
• Midday sun: roughly 5,500 K
• Overcast sky: roughly 6,500 K
• Shade: roughly 7,000 K or higher

Editors often show this as a "temperature" or "warmth" slider from cool (blue) to warm (yellow/orange), and a "tint" slider from green to magenta.

Fixing a colour cast

1. Find something that should be neutral, such as a white wall, a grey road, or a white shirt.
2. Adjust temperature until it looks neutral. If the photo is too yellow, move it cooler; if it's too blue, warmer.
3. Adjust tint if there is a green or pink cast, common under fluorescent lights.
4. Stop when skin looks natural. Skin tones are the quickest test of whether the balance is right.

Deliberate warmth or coolness

White balance is also a creative tool:

• Warm tones suggest cosiness, sunsets, nostalgia and comfort.
• Cool tones suggest calm, winter, distance or a modern feel.

A slight warm shift on a portrait or food photo is often pleasing, while a slight cool shift can make a landscape feel crisp.

Mixed lighting

When a scene has more than one light source, such as a window and a lamp, part of the photo will always look off. Choose the area that matters most, usually the face or the main subject, and balance for that.

Avoiding over-correction

Removing the warmth from a sunset makes it look dull, so don't neutralise it entirely. The goal is natural, not necessarily neutral.

Common mistakes

• Judging colour on a screen at very low brightness.
• Correcting so far that skin looks grey or green.
• Applying a filter first and then trying to fix colour on top.

Practice

Photograph the same object under a bulb, near a window and outdoors. Correct each to match, and compare.

Adjust colour and warmth with Cinexa →