Steps

  1. 1
    Understand what white balance is and how it affects your digital camera's picture. Different kinds of lighting look the same to the human visual system (although once you, as a photographer, know that there is a difference, you'll look for and notice it everywhere!). Our brains compensate for it automatically, so that a white thing will look white under any light. But a subject in the shade is slightly bluer than the same subject in bright daylight, and incandescent lightbulbs are very orange compared to both.

    People who shoot film need to use coloured filters on their lenses (or use special films). A digital camera can digitally alter the colour information from its sensors to compensate for the different colours coming from various light sources. The setting which controls how and to what extent this is done is called the white balance. Apart from compensating for the colour conditions, though, the white balance control can be used to warm or cool colours for artistic effect.[1]

    Most cameras have a white balance control, and will have all or some of the following settings:
  2. 2
    Find the white balance control on your camera. See your manual for details, but here are a couple of hints:[2]
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  3. 3
    Try your "Auto", "Daylight", "Cloud" and "Shady" white balance settings under daylight. Most of the time the colours will be too cool in "Auto", and you'll also find that things will look much nicer in the other settings. This differs from camera to camera; some cameras (specifically camera phones) have terrible white balance algorithms in some settings.[3]
  4. 4
    Try using your "cloudy" and "shade" settings to get warm colours, even in daylight! As said, these settings are intended to compensate for bluer light, but you can use them to warm your colours, too. Cameras have built-in colour correction algorithms, not built-in artists; they don't know that your photograph should be warm.[4]
  5. 5
    Use white balance trims to get your colours perfect. You might find, for example, that under certain kinds of indoor lighting your camera almost gets the white balance perfect in its "Auto" setting, but could do with being a little cooler, or that your sunsets would be perfect if they were a little bit warmer. This is where white balance trims (called "hue adjustment" on some cameras) come in: it allows you to take one of the camera's white balance presets, and adjust them slightly warmer or cooler to get perfect results. On all but the cheapest Nikon SLRs, you can do this by holding the white balance button and spinning the front control dial. Many cameras lack this adjustment entirely.
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Community Q&A

  • Question
    Can I manually set the WB on automatic mode?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    Yes, you can do it manually, depending on your camera. Just go to "menu," click on "white balance," then click on "auto settings."
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About This Article

wikiHow is a “wiki,” similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 18 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has been viewed 254,680 times.
111 votes - 87%
Co-authors: 18
Updated: December 24, 2021
Views: 254,680
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