Thank you all for your detailed responses! You've certainly given me something to think about, and I'm still processing the conflict in my mind. I totally agree that this all has very little practical impact on our day-to-day image processing. The only real impact I see may be with how far you can pull the WB into the extremes - e.g., going from 8000 to 10,000 is a smaller adjustment than going from 3000 to 10,000 - but seriously, who does that? The problem for my specific situation is that I have to submit unedited RAW files to a certification committee, and they need to be able to verify the exact settings I used in camera. It has nothing to do with how I process the images in post after capture. I get that color science is much more complex than simple exposure settings, but I can't shake the idea that there's still a parallel here. Yes, different sensors react differently to the same stimuli. One sensor may see a given color/shade as #ABC (just making up numbers here) while another may see the same color/shade as #AC7. But then doesn't that apply to exposure settings, too? Once sensor may be more sensitive than another, so the raw data would indicate different exposures. And yet, LR accurately reports the exact shutter speed, aperture, and ISO as written to the file by the camera. It doesn't try to interpret the exposure, perhaps changing the reported ISO, to conform to some Adobe standard. Yes, I know, the "exposure" slider always starts at 0, and all changes are deltas from there. I'm making an analogy. It's apples to grapefruit, I know. But the principle still applies - I want to know what settings I used in camera so I can use that as a basis in the future, when confronted with a same/similar lighting challenge, to either duplicate the setup or make proper adjustments. It's metadata. It's useful to know exactly what the camera used during capture. I do find it interesting, based on all your comments and links, how processing engines, like Camera RAW and others, handle the differences between manufacturers and camera/sensor capabilities. I'd have thought they could map the raw sensor data to a common, universal color space (like ProPhoto RGB), adjusting the mapping but maintaining the camera's metadata. Perhaps that's what's happening, just with the added step of trying to somehow normalize the colors after mapping, by tweaking WB and tint. I don't totally get that. I expect RAW to be RAW. When I shoot video using a LOG profile, I expect a flat, log image, not a colorful natural-looking image. I don't want RAW files to match the embedded JPG images. Still, I'm sure it's all more complicated that that. Smarter people than I have been working on this for much longer, so I'll reluctantly accept that it is what it is. As you all say, it really doesn't have much/any impact on my daily activity as a photographer. Perhaps this is all Nikon's fault, for not sharing the details on where to find WB values in their NEF files. Or maybe it's on Adobe for ignoring data it can only find in some but not all RAW formats. Or maybe knowing what camera settings were used has absolutely no value - toss it all out! Why should I care to know what lens I used or at what focal length, anyway? Metadata is useless! (deep sarcasm, sorry) I truly do appreciate all the feedback. Thanks!
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