Use white balance to create creative photos

The purpose of white balance is to match the colors detected by the camera with those observed by the naked eye. And our brains are very good at controlling the perception of color. On a sunny day, we see the outside world as warm and bright, even though the actual light may be bluish. While our eyes may detect warmer colors when exposed to indoor incandescent light bulbs, the camera's white balance helps us to correct for these differences and make the photos we take look more "natural."

Basically, most of the time, we will not deliberately adjust the White Balance setting of the camera, but simply use the AWB (Auto White Balance) function of the camera to let the camera decide what kind of White Balance to use. In post-production software Photoshop the white balance slider may not be very important to many people, often just a simple adjustment to make photos more realistic look and feel, but if the white balance Settings as a creative tool may help you more quickly adjust more creative tone. A change in the white balance can change the nature of your photos, and even the weather and time in your photos.

Hundreds to thousands of color temperature changes will make the image produce amazing images, like the above two photos, when the use of low color temperature, the picture is cold, more in line with the winter solemn scene, when the color temperature increased, the picture warming, as if a storm is approaching in the evening.

Post-production software allows us to adjust the color temperature according to different areas of the image instead of focusing on one color temperature. Generally speaking, when using Adobe Photoshop for post-production, we can use the adjustment brush function to select one of the areas to adjust separately. In the image above, the water's color temperature drops to 3700K. The cooler color temperature makes the water appear colder. For the leaves, normal exposure was used, around 5000K.

White balance in black-and-white photography

Although we believe that white balance is closely related to color, in fact, white balance can still play an important role in black and white photography, which will make the final image show different levels of gray. Since the contrast of color temperature may not be so obvious in black and white photography, you need to adjust the color temperature slider in a wide range to choose the effect you want most when adjusting your black and white photography.

Like this color temperature adjustment, in fact I cannot tell which is better or worse, may be more to see the photographer's own understanding of the image has its own style preferences. At the end of the day, white balance adjustment in post production is just a creative tool. If you like realistic colors, most of the time it's enough to use the camera's automatic white balance. Colour has color psychology; the tonal corresponding to different color temperature also can express the intention of cameraman. Use good white balance, can make your work more outstanding.