An adjustment made by the camera to neutralise colour shifts in the lighting. Digital cameras offer an auto white balance option where they choose the correction, or you can select manual white balance ‘presets’ when you want to control the camera’s colour rendition yourself. White balance adjustments are made using ‘colour temperature‘ and ‘tint‘.
White balance
Warmth
A non-technical way of describing the colour temperature of the light in a scene. Pictures taken with a low sun have ‘warmth’ because the light takes on a golden colour. Many photographs – landscapes, for example – can be enhanced with a little additional ‘warmth’.
Tint (white balance)
A secondary white balance adjustment used alongside colour temperature for more complex light sources like fluorescent lighting. Colour temperature works across an amber-blue spectrum, while tint adds a green-magenta axis.
Grey card
Used for accurate white balance calibration, usually under artificial lighting where the colour of the light sources is unknown or variable. You can use the camera’s manual white balance preset control to take reading from the grey card, or set the white balance using the card and the WB eyedropper tool in many image-editing programs.
Colour temperature
A traditional technical measurement for the white balance setting that uses temperature values in degrees Kelvin rather than named presets like ‘Direct Sunlight’, ‘Cloudy’ and so on. Colour temperature is used for choosing and controlling the colour of photographic lighting equipment and you can use it an alternative to white balance presets on more advanced cameras.