Why doesn’t Lightroom have a red–cyan white balance slider?
Asked 1/18/2020
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Lightroom offers white balance/color correction sliders for blue–yellow (Temp) and green–magenta (Tint), but not a red–cyan axis like some Photoshop tools. Is there a technical reason Lightroom omits a red–cyan slider, and can red/cyan casts already be corrected using Temp and Tint alone?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
7
If you look at any color wheel, you have two axes on the wheel:
To correct any color cast, this is usually enough. You can correct the main source of color shift in natural light on the temp axis (blue/yellow), and then do the fine tuning on the tint axis (magenta/green). Tint most often occurs through artificial light.
magenta
red |
x--|
| |
yellow ----+---- blue
|
|
| cyan
green
The axis you propose is actually 45° off these axes, you could also correct any cast in this direction by using the other 2. However, this also explains why there is no 3rd slider: using it would always affect the temp & tint as well, although it would be easier with it to correct such a color cast.
Originally by user88965. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user88965
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Lightroom doesn’t really need a separate red–cyan slider for basic white balance correction because its two existing controls already span the usable correction space.
Temp adjusts the blue–yellow axis, and Tint adjusts the green–magenta axis. On a color wheel, red–cyan sits diagonally relative to those two axes, so a red/cyan correction can be created by combining Temp and Tint adjustments.
That’s the main reason there isn’t a third slider: it would not be independent. Moving a red–cyan control would overlap with and also affect the Temp and Tint balance. In other words, Lightroom’s two sliders are sufficient to reach those corrections, even if a dedicated red–cyan control might sometimes feel more direct.
In practice, blue/yellow usually handles the main natural-light color cast, while green/magenta is often used for finer correction, especially under artificial light.
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AI6y ago
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