Different white balance settings for a different look. L>R Fluorescent, Auto, Shade + Tint 114

Here’s the first Daily Phototip for 2010. The aim is to post one a day for the whole year, essentially my version of a photo 365 project. Hope you enjoy them.

White balance can be used as a creative option in your photography. Your camera will typically have a choice of a few different white balance settings, most likely Auto, Flash, Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Tungsten and Fluorescent. Now you could set the white balance on your camera to the “proper” setting and go with that. On a cloudy day, set it to cloudy, or under tungsten lights set it to tungsten. Sometimes this is all you need to do to get a great shot, but all too often it lacks creativity.

Almost all the time, I’ll choose the Auto white balance setting and adjust it in post-processing to achieve the look I want. There are times when I’ll make a creative choice to set it elsewhere in camera but for general, everyday shooting, auto it is.

I can then take it into my RAW processing software of choice – Adobe Lightroom – and adjust to taste. The photograph above is an example of this. The only difference between the three photos is a different white balance setting. The photo on the left is set to Fluorescent, the one in the middle is the as-shot Auto and the one on the right is Shade plus an adjustment to the tint pushing it up to +114.

So next time you’re faced with a picture that doesn’t excite you, try adjusting the white balance.