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You are listening to Adorama narrated a collection of our favorite blog posts presented in audio format. White Understanding Its Role in Capturing True Colors Written by muji Published on January 26, 2026 White balance is a camera setting that adjusts the color temperature while taking an image, ensuring that objects that look white in reality also appear white in the photograph. It corrects color tints caused by different lighting conditions, from the warm orange of a sunset to the cool blue of shaded areas, resulting in more natural looking colors. Let's take a look at white balance from three different perspectives, beginner, enthusiast and professional. Level 1 the absolute basics if you wear orange tinted sunglasses, everything looks orange at first, but after a few minutes your brain adjusts and white paper looks white again as it automatically corrects colors the problem. Your camera, however, is not necessarily as intelligent. If you take a photo under warm yellow bulbs, everything takes on a yellow tint. If you shoot in the shade, you find a blue color cast. The Fix There is a setting on your camera called White Balance that tells the camera what white should look like so it can remove unwanted color casts. When a photograph's colors look unnatural appearing either too cool or too warm, it means the setting is incorrect. The solution is to dial in the appropriate white balance before capturing your image, which we will cover in the section below. Auto White Balance Mode. In Auto White Balance mode, the camera evaluates the scene and selects the most appropriate white point. However, the camera may not get it right as shown in the image below. In the blog post, you can see the original image as shot by the camera using Auto White Balance. The other image reflects the final post processed result adjusted to match the recollection of the scene by Muji. Level two for the growing photographer, the color of light is measured in the Kelvin scale. Yes, the same Kelvin that measures absolute temperature. You will see this on your camera screen when changing the White balance. Low numbers from 2000 to 4000K are warm lights like candles or warm bulbs, and they are yellow or orange. High numbers 6000k to 8000k are cool lights like overcast skies or open shade. Blue midday sun measures somewhere between 5000 to 6000K. The problem? Relying on auto White balance may yield inconsistent results due to variations in color temperature even when capturing multiple images under the same conditions. The Fix Use any of the following methods to tell the camera what the scene's light temperature is and what you want white to look like. Use presets in your camera menu Daylight, Cloudy Shade and Tungsten. This locks the color calibration, ensuring that a warm sunset has the shades you want or a moody blue hour shot retains its cool tones. Manual Kelvin Selection Choose a kelvin temperature manually. For example, set the white balance to 5600K for outdoor daylight scenes. 5600K is the standard photographic reference for neutral daylight. If you buy a studio light labeled Daylight Balanced, it will be 5600k. Other use gray cards or color charts to correct the white balance before the shoot. Methods of Adjusting White Balance Suppose a warm light bulb that you want to take a photo of has a temperature of 2700K. When you set your camera's white balance to 2700K, you are telling it that 2700K is the standard for true white. As a result, the bulb will appear neutral rather than warm. To preserve the warm glow of the bulb, you must rather set your white balance to a higher color temperature than the bulb, eg 5000k or the daylight preset. If you have a light source that is 2700k warm with a camera setting of 2700k, your visual result will be neutral or white. If you have a light source that is 2700K warm and a camera setting of 5000K, the visual result will be warm or orange. Anything below 5000k will appear warm. If you have a light source that is 5000K or cool and a camera setting of 2700K, your visual result will be deep blue. Anything above 5000K will appear cooler. Level 3 Pro Tips Shoot RAW we are all familiar with JPEG image files. The most common image format image quality is a camera setting that lets you choose RAW instead of jpeg. The RAW setting captures the light falling on the sensor and writes it to an image file so rich with information that you can easily adjust the white balance. In post processing software like Adobe Lightroom, a RAW image may also be converted to JPEG after editing. In the blog post, you can see an example of how to adjust white balance in post processing. There are two sliders in the editing software called temperature and tint to adjust the white balance. You can see this example by Muji in the blog post. Experiment. You can intentionally change the white balance in post processing. Changing the white balance helps create different moods. Final Remarks Experiment with different white balance presets or Kelvin values and learn which suits your style. As long as you are taking RAW images, you have greater versatility to adjust the white balance in post processing. Watch the YouTube video White Balance Theory and Practical by Muji embedded in the blog post. This has been White understanding its role in capturing true colors. Written by Muji Read for you by Nikki Haller for more posts like this, check out the 42 west blog at adorama.com blog links are in the show notes. Be sure to follow Adorama narrated on your favorite podcast app and leave us a review if you enjoy the content. Remember, create no matter what.