When taking photos with your phone, have you ever noticed how, at times, the image might look blue or yellowish under certain lighting? The cause of this may be that the camera’s white balance is off.
White balance is an important, yet not so often spoken about, setting on smartphone cameras. If it is set incorrectly, it can ruin a potentially great photo and make the colours look unnatural.
In this article, we’ll look at exactly what white balance is and how it works, as well as how to set it up for yourself in-camera or in post.
What is white balance?
Cameras see the world differently than we do. In digital photography, white balancing is the act of adjusting the camera’s colours so that the image looks more natural.
Without the correct white balance, your photos might end up looking too blue or too yellowish/orange.
However, photography is about personal preference and taste. So, there’s no saying what’s the right or wrong way to set the white balance. You can adjust it to create a certain mood or match whatever your creative vision is.
Why do cameras need help with white balance?
To better understand why a digital camera such as a smartphone camera needs help with white balance, you need to understand a few things about light and how the human eye works.
Different types of light have different colour temperatures, which means they don’t emit pure white light. Some types of light have warmer colour temperatures, others have cooler colour temperatures. This ultimately affects how things look under different types of lighting.
However, the human eye and how it processes images is quite amazing. If you look at a white piece of paper outside under sunlight and then look at it indoors under house lights, the paper will likely still look white.
That’s because our brains automatically process the light information and adjust the colour temperature so that everything always looks the right colour.
Smartphone cameras on the other hand, as sophisticated as they are, they’re not as sophisticated as human vision. Even though they’re getting better at automatically adjusting their white balance, they sometimes get it wrong.
Understanding colour temperature
As already mentioned, different lights have different colour temperatures. These are measured in Kelvin and expressed using the K symbol.
A low Kelvin temperature will make photos look more yellow/orange, while a high Kelvin temperature will make them look blueish.
The table below shows you the different types of light and colour temperatures.
| Type of Light | Colour Temperature |
|---|---|
| Candlelight | 1 000K - 2 000K |
| House lights | 2 500K - 3 500K |
| Sunrise and sunset | 3 000K - 4 000K |
| Sunlight | 5 000K - 6 000K |
| Midday/Sunny sky | 6 000K - 6 500K |
| Cloudy sky and shade | 6 500K - 8 000K |
| Blue sky light | 9 000K - 10 000K |
White balance presets
If you look at the white balance settings of your phone camera app you’ll notice that there are several white balance presets to choose from.
These presets have a predetermined Kelvin value set to them. These vary according to manufacturers and developers. But most commonly you’ll find the following:
Source: gottapics.com
Auto White Balance (AWB)
As the name suggests, this setting allows the camera to figure out the appropriate white balance setting on its own using the colour temperature of the scene’s ambient light.
This mode is perfect if you’re moving quickly from one type of lighting to another and don’t have time to fiddle with the settings. Just be mindful that sometimes the camera’s AI can get things a bit wrong.
Tungsten (Light bulb)
This preset is for use when the light comes from tungsten light bulbs. These are the type commonly found in the house. This preset tends to set the colour temperature to around 3500K.
Using the tungsten preset outside of an environment that’s not lit with tungsten lights may result in blue images.
Fluorescent (Glowing tube)
Fluorescent light is a bit tricky to work with because there are many types of bulbs, and each one has a slightly different colour temperature that changes over time.
Generally, however, all fluorescent lights give off a cool colour temperature. Using the fluorescent preset under such lighting conditions will add a bit of warmth to your shot at around 4000K.
Direct sunlight (Sun)
When taking photos outdoors under clear skies and the sunlight hits the subject directly, this is the white balance preset to use. It measures at roughly between 5000K and 6000K and is considered to be the most neutral of all the colour temperatures on the Kelvin scale.
Even if your subject is indoors and illuminated by sunlight through an opening such as a window, this preset might just work in your favour.
Cloudy (Cloud)
This white balance preset sets the colour temperature at around 6000K. Because cloudy days tend to give off slightly cooler tones, enabling this preset will add some warmth to your images.
Shade (House with shadow)
Very similar to the cloudy preset, only warmer. The shade preset adds warmth to make up for the cooler, blue tones that one gets on their subjects when they’re hidden from the sunlight.
Custom white balance
This lets you select the colour temperature you want. Different apps having different ways of doing this. Most commonly you’ll find a slider that allows you to select colour temperatures ranging anywhere from as low as 2000K up to 8000K or more.
Adjusting WB manually in-camera vs in post
There are two ways to adjust the white balance manually. You can either do it in the camera app before you take the photo or later on a computer or photo editing app.
So, when is it a good idea to do it one way instead of the other?
If your smartphone camera can shoot RAW, then congratulations, you don’t have to worry so much about white balance as you shoot.
The reason for this is because if you shoot in RAW format, the original image remains untouched and unprocessed by the camera. This means you can convert the RAW image to whatever white balance setting you want at a later stage.
If you’re shooting in jpeg format, things don’t quite work like that. These type of files are saved as already processed images that have gone through brightness and contrast adjustments as well as white balance and others.
There’s only so much you can do with a jpeg image once it’s been saved. So, it’s best you do the white balance in-camera before the shot is captured.
In-camera white balance
To access manual white balance, you need to switch to the Manual mode of your camera app. This also called Pro mode in some instances.
Samsung Galaxy Note 5 in Pro mode with white balance slider selected
If your camera app doesn’t have Manual mode, then get one that does. Being able to manually control settings such as white balance and others is one of the reasons you should learn and shoot in manual mode.
If you’re not familiar with Manual mode and all the settings in there, then check out this complete and comprehensive guide to manual mode.
Changing white balance in post-processing
Adjusting white balance when editing can be easy depending on the computer software or mobile photo editing app you use.
Whether you’re doing it on a computer or an app, the process of adjusting white balance is mostly similar across the board.
White balance presets on Adobe Lightroom
Once you have located the white balance settings, you’ll either have to move a slider up or down to select your desired colour temperature and tint or choose options from a colour temperature drop-down menu.
Using white balance creatively
As stated in the beginning, photography is a creative art form that is all about personal taste. You don’t always have to stick to the rules.
Next time you’re out in different types of light, change the white balance settings of your camera and see how that affects your picture.
You can use that to your advantage to capture some unique images. And if you can shoot RAW, all the better.
Bonus tip:
As a final closing tip, I strongly advise you pay attention to your phone’s screen display settings when working with white balance.
An uncalibrated screen can lead you to see colours incorrectly. This can be the case when you have your phone’s screen set to battery saving mode or the yellowish mode for eye sensitivity.
Make sure your display settings are set to the standard settings so that you can see colour correctly. But, learning to white balance your photos will only get you so far in mastering mobile photography. There’s a lot more to it.
You need to know your camera inside out and understand how it works so that you can make the most of it and take really amazing pictures. The better you get at it, the likelier your chances of making some extra money online with your mobile photos.
If you want to learn about how to improve your smartphone photography, download the 5 Ways To Improve Your Smartphone Photography ebook by clicking on the banner above or by clicking here. There’s a lot to learn in its 22 pages of content and it’s ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!
Otherwise, for some quick tips on how to capture great photos with your phone, check out these 15 Tips on How To Take Amazing Photos With Your Phone.