Lightroom White Balance Selector

Why are the RGB numbers in the Lightroom White Balance Selector different than the RGB numbers in Photoshop's Info palette?
If you convert the image in Photoshop to 32bit the RGB numbers are the same as the White Balance Selector in Lightroom, is Lightroom's WB Selector reading 32bit RGB values?

>Since prophotoRGB has a 1.8 gamma and prophoto has a 1.8 gamma, the numbers will be different, even if you do the math (divide by 2.56 for the 8-bit display).
Actually, while the histogram and samples are in "Melissa RGB" (so named by Mark Hamburg in tribute to Melissa Gual, the LR QE) in fact, the processing pipeline is using a linear gamma version of ProPhoto RGB. All of which means that the numbers shown in Lightroom really don't bear any relationship to any usable normal color spaces as you would have in Photoshop with a given working space.
The net result is that Lightroom reads out in %s instead of an arbitrary color space. Since, in Lightroom in Develop, the image isn't yet in a defined color space, it would be useless to actually give you readouts in a color spacewhich is what Photoshop can do (since the image is in a defined color space).
So, Lightroom and Photoshop are using different scales...

Similar Messages

White Balance Selector Target Calibration

I utilize a target calibration system with a panel that is 18% grey. With Lightroom 2 I would simply use the white balance selector and click on the grey and have perfect white balance. However with Lightroom 3 this no longer works consistently. In fact sometimes the White balance set to off the chart numbers like 12,000. Any ideas or thoughts?!
Thanks,
David

Could you post a screenshot of how it looks like.
I guess you could be talking about the White Balance Loupe.
You can disable that by unticking "Show Loupe" when you have the White Balance Selector active. (But I wouldn't call the Loupe a "weird little mess of different coloured dots", more like a gride. And it doesn't obscure the pipette either).
/Andreas

White Balance Selector Disappears when moved across the image

Hi
I am using LR 4.4 on an iMac.
Does anyone know why the White Balance Selector tool would disappear when moved across an image?
it seems to change to a vertical line with an arror top and bottom.
The areas of the image on which it disappears seem to be consistent, in other words, it disappears on the same portion of the image eveytime.
UPDATE: Since posting the above a few minutes ago I've noticed that my cursor is behaving eractically. For example, on a different image to the one used above, in the library module using the Loupe the cursor changes from a magnifying glass to an arrow pointing to the right. It does this on the same part of the image every time.
Thank you for your help
Regards
Message was edited by: iwaddo

Weird cursor problems are a FEATURE of the APPLE os.
There are complaints on the APPLE os system website since 2005.
The last time I checked there were 30 pages of discussions about this on the apple site
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/os_x_mountain_lion.
I don't think APPLE has a clue as to how to fix this. It is seen in many apps, photoshop most commonly, lightroom,textedit,exxcel, and others.
Pray that something happens in soon to be released 10.8.4.
vince

White balance selector reading

Is it possible to change a setting or preference in Lightroom so that the white balance selector tool will give a 0-255 value reading, instead of a 0-99 value? Having that option would allow users to better correlate their readings with what will show up once the images is analyzed with Photoshop's eyedropper tools and info window. Answers, Anyone?

You may have noticed that the values shown in the WB probe loupe are the same as those shown under the histogram. These numbers represent RGB values in a unique hybrid color space, Melissa RGB which has the ProPhoto RGB gamut and the sRGB tone curve. RGB values are always relative to a particular color space, therefore when the image is exported in one of the more standard spaces the numbers will be different. Even if you export in ProPhoto RGB the values will be different because although the gamut is the same the tone curve is gamma 1.8 instead of the "sort of" gamma 2.2 of sRGB. That is why the numerical read-outs - histogram and WB probe - are given as percentages instead of absolute 8 bit values - to avoid confusion that could be caused by displaying numbers that are essentially meaningless. However, in LR4 and LR5 you can soft proof to one of the standard spaces and at that time the read-out under the histogram will be in 0 - 255 numbers. You can even change the targeted proof space and see how the values change for the same pixel. Moreover, in LR5 you can change the read-out during editing to L*a*b* numbers if you find that more useful.

White balance selector tool in LR

just a general question here: when using the "white balance selector" eyedropper tool in LR, is this effectively equivalent to neutralizing the greys in PS, i.e. via the midtones eyedropper in a levels adjustment? just curious...

If you have both PS/Adobe Camera Raw and LR applications, you may find this this link helpful:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3436153?tstart=0
I have both PS CS5 and LR 3, but do 99% of my digital camera and scanner image processing in LR. For things like dust spot removal on slide and negative scans PS CS5 spot healing brush and clone stamp tools are superior to LR's. I also don't need "spot removal" and initial frame cropping of scans to be non-destructive. Once this is done I open in LR and do everything else non-destructively.

White Balance Selector Tool operation

The WB selector tool still appears as though it only selects one pixel in the the "Pick a Target Neutral" array display window, the one with the x over it (regardles of whether you scale the matrix to 16x16 or 5x5 with the scale slider. It does not appear to allow averaging of adjacent pixels to reduce the effect of random noisy pixels messing up the wb. This has already been brought up in previous threads and the LR team apparently dismisses the concern. Reminder to Adobe Labs: we don't all shoot with relatively noiseless Nikon D3/ D700s. Our cameras do produce significant color noise even at relatively low ISOs. So when we attempt to find a neutral patch or pick a spot on a neutral whibal card with the color picker tool, we see a random array of various shades of gray, some a little more purple, some a little more green in the tool's selection window. Depending on which pixel we place the X on, we get a different white balance. EVEN THOUGH WE ARE HOVERING OVER WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN EVENLY LIT NEUTRAL BALANCE CARD! Could you guys please talk with your Photoshop colleagues and figure out how to give us a 5x5 or NxN pixel averaging white balance picker. Or maybe you confirm that I am wrong and in fact this tool already DOES average all the pixels I see in the "Pick a Target Neutral" pixel array display? This would be far more useful an option than the ability to put a decorative flourish at the bottom of a menu panel! Thanks.

In addition to the point being made above in regards to a 3x3 or 5x5 pixel eye dropper for the selection of your color balance(color temperature), it would be great to have an eye dropper to select & set your black, white & mid grey(18%) point inside of lightroom to not only neutralize any color cast but also to set your tonal values with a x-rite color checker or similar reference.

Camera White balance vs Lightroom White balance

I have nikon d90 and I have cloudy balance set by default.
When I import to lightroom 4, the WB value is 4950 and lightroom cloudy is 6500.
Attached is the example of original vs lightroom WB.(the whibal card was not used to set WB)
Why both same WB types differ so much?
thx

The fact that LR displays the WB as 4950 does not mean anything, because color temperature in this context is not an absolute value but rather a range of numbers. Actually, LR knows nothing about color temperature when applying a WB, it knows only amounts of mutiplication applied to the red and blue channels, amounts that it reads from the metadata written by the camera when the "As Shot" option is set. However, the program designers believe that showing the multipliers in the interface is information that will only confuse the user - although there are a few Raw converters that do display the multipliers - so instead they translate the multipliers into a temperature for which that particular pair of multipliers could be used. However, because color temperature is a range of values, the algorithm for doing this reverse calculation cannot always produce the same result that a colorimeter would indicate if measuring the light at the scene, instead it comes up with a different value within the range.

White balance selector tool

When i select the wb tool in the develop mode and move it over the image the RGB numbers do not show up in the floating grid.
Is there somthing I need to select for this to work ?
Ken

Ken,
It's a known bug with 3.3RC.
Hal

The Lightroom Manual is Not Clear on Options for the White-Balance Tool

In the section "Working with image tone and color" the Lightroom manual states:
Specify a neutral area in the photo
1. In the Basic panel of the Develop module, click the White Balance Selector tool to select it, or press the W key.
2. Move the White Balance Selector into an area of the photo that should be a neutral light gray. Avoid spectral highlights or areas that are
100% white.
3. Set options in the toolbar as needed.
Sets the White Balance Selector tool to dismiss automatically after clicking only once in the photo.
Displays a close-up view and the RGB values of a sampling of pixels under the White Balance Selector.
Zooms the close-up view in the Loupe...."
Item 3 is unclear. I selected the white balance selector, and moved it to an area as instructed,
but I cannot find any toolbar with the options described.
How do I get to this mysterious toolbar?? Everyone seems to think its a simple thing, but I cannot find it and I am not able to set any of the options described!
While I am sure this is a simple thing, I think that the manual should be much more clear about this description; what is there now is very inadequate.

It should be directly underneath the image preview - press the T key if it's not there.

A dumb question about kelvin and white balance in Lightroom

I keep reading a high kelvin number is cooler and a low number is warmer, but in light room, in the develope module, the lower number ( 3500 ) is blue, and a higher number, (7000) is very yellow. What am I missing?

Lee is essentially correct with his analysis but incorrect with the details. The Kelvin colour temperature scale is between Yellow and Blue, not Red and Blue as stated.
There's a lot of confusion about this, with many digital photographers missing the significance of the difference between cyan and blue, magenta and red etc.
To be fair, the printing industry has added to the confusion by traditionally calling printing inks Blue, Red and Yellow when they really are cyan, magenta and yellow.
Even Adobe can get it wrong. In the initial Lightroom beta release, the temperature scale had the colours Cyan at one end and Yellow at the other. I suggested it be changed to Blue to make it correct and less confusing which thankfully was implemented in the next update.
Despite decades of working with colour both in the darkroom and with Photoshop, I too struggle with the counter-intuitive approach of the colour temperature reading in Lightroom.
Essentially, if you shoot in light that is too blue, then you need to add Yellow. So the Kelvin number displayed in Lightroom isn't the 'Mired' correction or the amount of Yellow added, but a readout of the scene's original colour temperature before the Yellow correction.
This can be really useful. I use several different branded flash units with various reflectors and attachments. I recently ran a test, shooting a Macbeth colour checker with all the different combinations.
I then used the White Balance Selector (dropper) on the neutral 5 patch and wrote down the resulting colour temperature.
From that I could work out what filter corrections I needed to use on each flash and reflector to produce consistent daylight balance.
Most flashes seem to be around 6000ºK but I had variation between 5200ºK & 6400ºK with the combinations.

Images look different with same white balance

Hey folks,
Just ran some tests between a Nikon D300 and a Nikon D7000. I pulled both images into Lightroom 3.4 (PC), and matched the white balance using the White Balance Selector tool and a WhiBal card in a test image. And even though they now have the same white balance, the colors are distinctly different. How is this possible? (The same image shot with a D200 looks nearly identical to the D300.) Examples:
D7000
D300
All other specs the same:
Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 @50mm
1/80 @ f/5.6, ISO 200
RAW
Color space: AdobeRGB
Picture Control setting: SD (standard)
Custom white balance from WhiBal card, matched in Lightroom 3.4: 5200, +38
I need to be able to shoot with multiple bodies and sync them so I don't have to adjust the batches separately.
Thanks in advance

WB is not the only factor involved in how colour is created in a digital image. The WB just sets the colour temperature. How the colour is created is effected by many other factors, hence calibration profiles. By calibrating the sensor you can produce a standardised response for a particular individual sensor. You could then carefully match this with a different sensor. However there will always be subtle differences. It would be far easier when requiring a particular shoot to have exactly the same look, to use one camera and one lens to achieve it.
When making a film, directors, such as Hitchcock, would insist on not only using the same film stock, from the same batch, but in the case of Vertigo even had the same water source used for all processing to achieve the look he was after.

Batch White Balance using a reference pixel?

Hi,
I have shot a time lapse image sequence that includes change from day to night & vice versa. The automatic white balance produces unsatisfying results.
Since it's always the same scene, what I would like to do is this: Select one pixel in one of the images and have Lightroom (3.3) use this pixel on each of the images as a reference for white balancing them.
Is this possible?
A solution for Camera Raw or Photoshop (CS5) would also be okay.
Thanks a lot!
Mike

Hi clvrmnky,
hi BDLImagery,
thanks for your replies.
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
The dropper will use an average from that selection to choose a neurtal, shifting all colours to match that new neutral. I suspect this is not what you want.
I do have some snow in foreground which imho makes a nice reference for white balancing since I don't want the snow to be blue, pink or whatever I've got at the moment. Same goes for the clouds. So my idea is to use each pic's snow at the same pixel position for white balancing.
function(){return A.apply(null,[this].concat($A(arguments)))}
Only way I can think of is to create an Action in Photoshop, tie this action with the Lightroom export function and check the "add to this catalog" in the Export window to import the modified photo back in the catalog.
Thought of something like that, too, but the problem is that applying a white balance after import (which this would be) would already work on corrupted data by the previous in-app (camera raw or lightroom) white balance. I tried it on a pic that comes out of the default white balance as completely blue, and you cant rescue that after import to photoshop since by then the original info is lost.
I think I'll now go something like this:
Select all ~5000 images in camera raw, perform white balance on the first one & propagate to the others, then browse forwards to the first one that does not work with these settings, select from that one to the end & do white-balace on those & repeat until done. And to avoid sharp cut-overs do some more or less smooth transitions on the surrounding images.
Kind regards
Mike

LR resets custom white balance on import

Hey guys,
So I photograph my aquarium under blue lights as it brings out the intense colour of the corals more. I set a custom white balance with a card and everything on the camera screen looks fantastic. Once imported, LR resets the white balance and everything shows up as a big blue mass.
Hope someone can help and tell me what I'm doing wrong. Lightroom version 5.6
Example of the same picture on the camera and from lightroom

With underwater photos in Lightroom, the trick is to generate a custom camera profile. Lightroom has an upper limit to the white balance and will cut it off if the camera reports a higher number. There are instructions over here: http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/products/photoshop/pdfs/cs6/DNGProfile_Edi torDocumentation.pdf (tutorial 4 is what you want but go right on the slider instead of left) on how to do this. You can also take a look at Lightroom: White balance adjustments for underwater photography at Seppo Enervi's instructions.

Mark III extreme manual white balance.

I recently photographed a concert which had nothing but purple lighting. I set my Canon 5D MkIII to a manual white balance. To my surprise, the camera was able to properly balance the color and my whites appeared white. I loaded the images into lightroom and the preview showed a properly balanced photo. As soon as the photo was finished loading, the color snapped to what would look like an auto white balance. (my whites were now purple like the lights). In any other application, the white balance is spot on. In light room, the color is extremely purple.
Import settings are set at the default, no actions are taken upon import. (develop settings are set to "none")
here is a one minute video of exactly what is happening to me:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151406642951705&comment_id=270254886&offset=0&total _comments=50&notif_t=video_comment
What I believe is happening (theory based on the maxed out sliders) is that the camera's white balance range has exceeded the capabilities of lightrooms white balance rang
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks

Joe93452444,
Are you shooting JPG or Raw?
Raw images don't have a WB setting in the Raw data. When shooting Raw the WB setting that you select in the camera is only a metadata tag.
This WB tag is initially read by Lr but Lr then evaluates the image and applies its own WB setting. Thus the Wb in Lr can be different than what you see in camera.
You can change the WB in Lr in three ways:
a) by selecting a different camera profile (in Develop Module / Camera Calibration / Profile (when you change the profile the WB sliders in the Basic panel do n't change but the image data is interpreted differently);
b) by using the sliders in Develop Module / Camera Calibration - and using the option of "saving" the settings as a preset for similar shots;
c) by using the WB and Tint sliders in Develop Module / basic panel.

White balance dropper

Is there a way to make the eyedropper for Lightroom White Balance persist? In ACR I can select the eyedropper and click around the image to see the white balance from various points. In Lightroom after I click a spot the eyedropper is no longer active and I have to go select it again...
This is really slow and it'd be handy if I could click multiple spots... Is there a way to do this?

The people that designed the keyboard shortcuts and the user commands for LR did a great job. It's just a joy to use with the keyboard. There are always 3 ways to do the same thing and one of them works just right for me.

Lightroom White Balance Selector

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