George Mann’s previous post illustrated the effects of Lightroom’s white balance presets. In the event that one of the presets don’t fill your needs, you are, of course, free to set your own balance, either with the eyedropper (as George describes), or by manually adjusting the Temperature & Tint sliders. The following anecdote illustrates one such situation.

Last week I shot a conference that took place in less–than–ideal lighting conditions: the stage and its speakers were lit by relatively dim incandescant lights reflected off red, orange, or brown surfaces: carpet, floors, and walls all added to the glow. Looking at the images in Lightroom at the end of the first day presented me with less–than promising results: virtually all of the images had a strong orange/red tint and were noticeably lacking in the contrast department. Luckily, Lightroom’s adjustments (white balance, contrast & clarity, and a few curve tweaks) on the RAW files were able to bring the shots back to something much closer to reality.

Above is a sample of one of the images viewed with Lightroom’s Before & After comparison split view. By using the Sync command, these changes can be easily & quickly applied to similar shots from the sequence.

Viva Lightroom!