Can I recover the Kelvin and tint values chosen by Auto White Balance?
Asked 3/18/2016
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2 answers
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I often shoot weddings in mixed lighting and usually set white balance manually using a Sekonic Kelvin meter, then fine-tune tint to match ambient light and gels. Sometimes I use Auto White Balance instead. If I do, is there a way to see the camera’s calculated white balance afterward as specific Kelvin and tint values?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
1
If you shoot RAW, you can see the values for white balance and tint in Lightroom or the Adobe Camera Raw plugin. If you shoot JPG, you can find the values in Photoshop by going to File --> File Info, then going to Raw Data. If you copy and paste this info into a new Word doc (or other text editor) then do a search for "temperature" and "tint" you should find the values.
Originally by user49824. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user49824
10y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—usually, if the file preserves that metadata.
If you shoot RAW, the Auto White Balance setting chosen by the camera can typically be viewed in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw, where the image will show white balance as temperature and tint values.
If you shoot JPEG, those values may still be embedded in the file metadata. One way mentioned is to open the file in Photoshop, go to File Info, then Raw Data, copy that text into a text editor, and search for entries like “temperature” and “tint.”
Keep in mind that these values are metadata used by software and may not always map perfectly to a simple in-camera Kelvin number the same way a manual setting does, especially across different camera brands and software. But in general, yes: with RAW files in particular, you can usually recover the camera’s AWB result as temperature and tint.
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