Usually we all use white balance settings to render accurate colours in our shots. And this is achieved by selecting the right white balance settings to match the colour temperature of the light being used. Let us now discuss how we could purposefully offset the white balance of our digital camera to simulate the effect of using warming and cooling filters.
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| Photo By Sacha Fernandez White balance set to tungsten to achieve the blues |
The easiest method of achieving this is to set your camera to a pre-set white balance mode that generates the desired effect. It will be helpful to have a basic understanding of what each mode does to the image so you need not do trial and error each time to wish to do something like this.
White Balance Pre set Colour Cast
Daylight Mild Amber
Flash Mild Amber
Cloudy Medium Amber
Shade Heavy Amber
Fluorescent Magenta / Pink
Tungsten Heavy Blue
If you are manually setting the Kelvin remember this rule to get a blue tone in your shots user lower values in the Kelvin scale e.g. 2000k and to get an amber tone to your images set the Kelvin values to a higher number for e.g. 8500k. Remember the lowest value in the Kelvin scale produces the coldest blue and the highest value produces the warmest amber and every value in between produces medium effects corresponding to the value of the numbers.
Flash Mild Amber
Cloudy Medium Amber
Shade Heavy Amber
Fluorescent Magenta / Pink
Tungsten Heavy Blue
If you are manually setting the Kelvin remember this rule to get a blue tone in your shots user lower values in the Kelvin scale e.g. 2000k and to get an amber tone to your images set the Kelvin values to a higher number for e.g. 8500k. Remember the lowest value in the Kelvin scale produces the coldest blue and the highest value produces the warmest amber and every value in between produces medium effects corresponding to the value of the numbers.