Is Lightroom WB tool Accurate?

[Nicks Pics]

Hello folks

When I use the Lightroom 4 white balance picker tool, it usually sets the WB too warm, for my tastes at least. Now sometimes it is just setting the WB to 5500 which I have heard is the temp of daylight, but if the WB tool usually makes my images too warm, or 5500 makes an image taken in daylight too warm-looking, does this indicate that my screen is off? Or does it just mean that the WB tool is not working well enough?

Don't know if anyone has an opinion on this one way or the other, but know your input would be appreciated!

[Manfred M]

The way the WB picker works is that it assumes that the sample you are clicking on is neutral coloured (i.e. a shade of gray) and does the balance based on that. If the sample is not neutral, then the WB will be off. The best solution is to use a standard gray (or white) target in an image where the light is the same as the rest of the subject and balance there and sample the target. This tends to work well for portaiture or product shots, but does not generally work for landscapes or wildlife work.

While there can be issues with WB, for instance mixed lighting situations of bleed over of dominant colours (taking a picture under the green leaves of a tree or against a red brick wall, for instance); the tool is bang on if used properly.

Unless you have a calibrated and profiled computer display, you have no idea whether or not your WB is off or your computer screen is off. Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to get an electronic calibration tool and calibrate / profile your computer screen.

[Andrew1]

Could be your screen and as Manfred indicated, a calibration tool is really required to get the accuracy and/or confirm it. If you don't already have that or it isn't in the immediate future for you then take the file to a commercial printer and have them do up an 8X10 for you. Tell them to not make any adjustment and that they turn off all the automatic adjustment in their process. I happen to live close to a Costco and they have excellent printers. Their operators at more than one location I've used have all been there awhile and know what they are doing. Take the print and compare it to the screen. Colours may or may not be exact however the general warm tone you see will be evident if it's the adjustment.

The nice thing about many of the controls is that they are all adjustable to ones personal taste. If you don't remember the scene looking like the way it turned out, change it. That simple. It's not right or wrong as the light changes throughout the day. Just the way the light was when you took the shot.

[Glenn NK]

Hello folks

When I use the Lightroom 4 white balance picker tool, it usually sets the WB too warm, for my tastes at least. Now sometimes it is just setting the WB to 5500 which I have heard is the temp of daylight, but if the WB tool usually makes my images too warm, or 5500 makes an image taken in daylight too warm-looking, does this indicate that my screen is off? Or does it just mean that the WB tool is not working well enough?

Don't know if anyone has an opinion on this one way or the other, but know your input would be appreciated!

Nick:

In addition to what Manfred and Andrew have said (all correct AFAIK), the temperature of "daylight" is constantly changing.

1) step into the shade - different temp.

2) a cloud passes over - different temp.

3) when the angle of the sun changes (it's always changing of course), different temps.

I personally feel that chasing the perfect/ideal/correct WB is a bit of a fool's errand. As Manfred points out, there is very often the problem of mixed lighting - it happens all the time in landscapes taken during the golden hours when a large portion of the image is is shade.
And if you attempt to "fix" it by masking different areas and changing the WB, it will be so obvious. Our brains know when something is in shade, and we expect a cooler colour in shade areas - artists have known this for centuries and add a bit of blue to areas of a painting that are in shade.

As suggested by Andrew, balance it so it looks "right" and check it with a print made by a lab.

Glenn

[george013]

Keep in mind that there is no exact colourtemperature for daylight. Even if there is one, it's changing during the day and depending on the place on earth you're.
What you 're doing now is a kind of reverse enginering. You try to correct the used WB so that a gray surface is gray again. But you have to know what is gray. And the correction is a mathematical correction based on the pixelvalues. And here's where the callibration comes in. Mathematical it may be gray, but you must see gray also.
George

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi Nick.

Dont get to hung up about it all, remember that WB is subjective and although the WB tool is correct in LR (Adobe Camera RAW) it still may not look right to you, and what looks right to you may not look right to me. For instance take a look at this thread.

Beauty re touching advice and help please

Its one of mine on beauty re touching, a few people had a go and the WB 's are all different, they look good to the editor BUT may not look good to others.... SO here in my opinion is what you should do... (and of course its what i do )

Lets ignore printing for now and just consider screen display...

When you shoot take a shot including a colour checker passport, remember to do this every time the light changes, it doesn't take long.
You can the use this to give both colour and WB profiles for your images and you then have a start point.
You must have your monitor calibrated otherwise when you do you editing other viewers stand no chance of seeing what you intend them to see. Theres not much you can do about a viewers monitor but hey ho you have to start somewhere!
Once you have your image with LR/colour passports setting you the tweak it to how YOU like it and thats it, remember YOU are the artist and its your work and should look how YOU want it to.

[Simon Garrett]

I don't think the way WB is specified is entirely consistent between software. One program's 5500K may not be identical to another program's 5500K. I find that in Lightroom sunny daylight often looks better at about 5200-5300K, even though Lightroom's "Daylight" setting is 5500K

For Nikon, at any rate, the way WB is encoded doesn't appear to contain a K value. I've opened a D800 raw open in Nikon Capture NX-D and it says the WB is 5505K. Lightroom says the same image is 5350K. They look the same WB on the screen.

[Stagecoach]

And when you have done all this Nick, keep your fingers crossed that all human eyes see colour the same

[george013]

I don't think the way WB is specified is entirely consistent between software. One program's 5500K may not be identical to another program's 5500K. I find that in Lightroom sunny daylight often looks better at about 5200-5300K, even though Lightroom's "Daylight" setting is 5500K

For Nikon, at any rate, the way WB is encoded doesn't appear to contain a K value. I've opened a D800 raw open in Nikon Capture NX-D and it says the WB is 5505K. Lightroom says the same image is 5350K. They look the same WB on the screen.

And which K is thge right one?

I had to reinstall Capture-Nx due to another pc. It surpised me that in the WB part now a K value is shown. Before it was As Shot without a K value. Now I can change the WB without forcing it to show a colourtemperature. To me Nikon is mostly to cold.

George

[Simon Garrett]

And which K is thge right one?

I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Someone that knows more might explain better, but I seem to recall reading that matching the black-body equivalent lighting of the original scene in a rendered image is not an exact science.

[Mark von Kanel]

I'm not sure it's as simple as that. Someone that knows more might explain better, but I seem to recall reading that matching the black-body equivalent lighting of the original scene in a rendered image is not an exact science.

Wasting your time guys, the one that looks right to you is the right one for your images.

[DanK]

+1 to what Manfred and Andrew wrote. If you don't have a neutral target and a calibrated monitor, all bets are off.

I disagree with those who say it is a waste of time to try to get WB 'right.' I agree that a neutral WB is often not what I want in the final image, but it often is, and in either case, I find it a much easier starting point for editing than whatever the camera guessed. I have often found that when I edited without a neutral reference, I ended up going back and redoing things, often because I left the color too warm.

I do agree that it is pointless to get hung up on what "daylight" is, since that varies from situation to situation. Using the eyedropper with a neutral target adjusts the balance so that that area, regardless of the lighting, is rendered as neutral. Whether that is what you want, given what 'daylight' looked like to you, is your call.

[Nicks Pics]

Thanks for the responses folks. I do suppose that saying 5500k must look right on every image taken in daylight is taking a too general approach to the situation, that's why I almost never use the "Daylight" (5500k) or "cloudy" (6500k) or "shade" (7500k) presets. I was wondering if the WB tool in LR was accurate enough that I should trust it over my display, (if it sets something white to yellow, then I would know that to the computer it's white, but my display is showing it yellow), but i's probably not.

Glenn mentioned above that cooler colors represent shade. That's generally how I think of it too, but according to cameras' WB presets, warmer means shade. To confuse things, my monitor does it the reverse direction, and 6500k is cooler than 5700k. Odd??

[Mark von Kanel]

Nik if your monitor is calibrated, trust your eyes (unless your visually impaired of course)

[george013]

Thanks for the responses folks. I do suppose that saying 5500k must look right on every image taken in daylight is taking a too general approach to the situation, that's why I almost never use the "Daylight" (5500k) or "cloudy" (6500k) or "shade" (7500k) presets. I was wondering if the WB tool in LR was accurate enough that I should trust it over my display, (if it sets something white to yellow, then I would know that to the computer it's white, but my display is showing it yellow), but i's probably not.

Glenn mentioned above that cooler colors represent shade. That's generally how I think of it too, but according to cameras' WB presets, warmer means shade. To confuse things, my monitor does it the reverse direction, and 6500k is cooler than 5700k. Odd??

It is confusing. The hotter it is, the more blue. I think in photography the correction is ment. It's something like filters: is it blocking or passing?
In CaptureNx direct sunlight 5200, cloudy 6000, shadow 8000.
George

[DanK]

To confuse things, my monitor does it the reverse direction, and 6500k is cooler than 5700k. Odd??

See if this helps. I just took three shots of a neutral gray card in dappled sunlight. (It's the wrong side of the card, but that is a trivial difference; I did it to have only gray in the image.) Here is the first shot, with the camera set to daylight (5200K):



It looks just like it should. Then I shot the same card with the camera set to shade and to tungsten. Setting it to shade (7000K) made it look yellow, and setting it to tungsten (3200K) made it look very blue. Here is the one from the tungsten setting:



Note that by setting the WB to a temperature that you associate with yellower colors, I turned the image blue. If I then put the LR eyedropper on it, LR resets the WB to 4950--almost the 5200 of the daylight setting--and the image now looks nearly identical to the first one.

So, what is happening? Why would setting the camera for tungsten light, which is more yellow, turn the neutral target blue? Because setting the camera for the tunsgsten setting is telling it that the lighting was tungsten and that it should compensate for this yellowish light. Since the light wasn't actually tungsten, this is the wrong thing to do, and compensating for the yellow makes the image of the neutral target blue. When I used the LR eyedropper, I was instructing LR to consider that area neutral despite the WB setting it read from the file and to change the color temperature to the one that would have produced a neutral gray image.

[Nicks Pics]

See if this helps. I just took three shots of a neutral gray card in dappled sunlight. (It's the wrong side of the card, but that is a trivial difference; I did it to have only gray in the image.) Here is the first shot, with the camera set to daylight (5200K):



It looks just like it should. Then I shot the same card with the camera set to shade and to tungsten. Setting it to shade (7000K) made it look yellow, and setting it to tungsten (3200K) made it look very blue. Here is the one from the tungsten setting:



Note that by setting the WB to a temperature that you associate with yellower colors, I turned the image blue. If I then put the LR eyedropper on it, LR resets the WB to 4950--almost the 5200 of the daylight setting--and the image now looks nearly identical to the first one.

So, what is happening? Why would setting the camera for tungsten light, which is more yellow, turn the neutral target blue? Because setting the camera for the tunsgsten setting is telling it that the lighting was tungsten and that it should compensate for this yellowish light. Since the light wasn't actually tungsten, this is the wrong thing to do, and compensating for the yellow makes the image of the neutral target blue. When I used the LR eyedropper, I was instructing LR to consider that area neutral despite the WB setting it read from the file and to change the color temperature to the one that would have produced a neutral gray image.

Dan, thanks for this explanation. Perhaps you are saying that the monitor and the photos are actually on the same scale, but produce the opposite visual affects? I may need to let that one soak into my head through experience, but I'm starting to get it I think.

[FrankMi]

Nick, being as most of what we see as the correct WB is personally subjective, and your question is about the copy of Lightroom that you are using, what if you have the WB set by the exact same location for the picker in another software package, then compare both images on your computer. If there is a difference in the software, you will know it.

[george013]

Nick, being as most of what we see as the correct WB is personally subjective, and your question is about the copy of Lightroom that you are using, what if you have the WB set by the exact same location for the picker in another software package, then compare both images on your computer. If there is a difference in the software, you will know it.

One of the questions was that normaly spoken blue is warmer than red, this is in photography opposite: red is warmer than blue. He and I know that you correct the influenze of the lightsource, but why the opposite scale?
There must be another explanation.
In capture you can choise standard and broadspectrum tubes. For both you can choise white 3700. The same colourtemperature but a complete different result.

George

[Manfred M]

After reading some of the responses, I'm not convinced that everyone quite understands how the WB tool operates. For practical purposes, I used ACR instead of Lightroom to show what is happening. The ACR interface is less messy and I'm not sure if one can drop sample points in LR.

First up is an image I shot this morning using a halogen (tungsten) light source using a WhiBal card. The colour balance setting was tungsten:




It's not hard to see that there is a colour cast that is orange, i.e. the red and blue values are incorrect. The sample point I use is near the centre of the target.

After clicking the white balance tool on the target, this is what I get. The neutral target gives (nearly) identical values for R, G and B. This means the image has the proper white balance set.





So the "secret of success" using the WB tool in ACR or Lightroom is to pick a sample area that is neutral gray; in theory, any material that has equal values of R, G and B. If your sample area is not truly "gray" you will introduce a colour cast into the image. If one gets inconsistent results, its because the sample area being clicked on is not neutral.

The other thing I wanted to demonstrate is the relative uselessness of trying to set a colour temperature. One might be close in a studio when using studio strobes or a speedlight, but getting the colour temperature right anywhere else would be a fluke, nothing less. The only way to get a proper colour temperature reading is to buy a fairly expensive colour temperature meter from a company like Sekonic or Gossen,