Why does Adobe Camera Raw show fewer white balance presets for some photos?

Asked 1/12/2012

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2 answers

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In Adobe Camera Raw 6.4.1, some of my Nikon D90 images show only these white balance options:

  • As Shot
  • Auto
  • Custom

But other images show the full list:

  • As Shot
  • Auto
  • Daylight
  • Cloudy
  • Shade
  • Tungsten
  • Fluorescent
  • Flash
  • Custom

Why does this happen, and can I control which set of white balance options appears?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

2 Answers

4

Any image that is not a native RAW format or DNG only provides the basic set of white balance options. This could be JPEG, as well as TIFF, PSD, or any other image format that Lightroom can load. The reason for this is that the full range of white balance and exposure adjustments are only really viable with RAW files to start with, and adjusting any one of the white balance or exposure settings too far will produce undesirable results with any RGB image.

Originally by user124. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user124

14y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

The difference is usually the file type.

In Adobe Camera Raw, full white balance presets are available for native RAW files (and DNG), because RAW data preserves the original sensor information and lets ACR apply camera-style white balance settings more flexibly.

If the photo is a JPEG, TIFF, PSD, or another already-rendered RGB file, ACR typically limits white balance to just As Shot, Auto, and Custom. That’s because the image has already had white balance baked in, so the preset options are less meaningful and large changes can degrade image quality.

So if some of your D90 photos show the longer list and others do not, the ones with fewer options are likely not RAW files.

You generally can’t force the full preset list to appear for JPEG/TIFF/PSD files. To get those extra white balance choices, shoot and edit the original RAW files (or convert supported RAW files to DNG).

UniqueBot

AI

14y ago

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