Can't copy / paste white balance from one photo to another

Question

I'm using Lightroom 14.4 on Windows 11 Pro.

I'm trying to copy the white balance from one photo to a few others. I've tried going to Settings / Copy Settings and selecting just White Balance on the source image, then using Settings / Paste Settings on the target image; I've tried right clicking on the source image in the filmstrip and going to Copy Settings and selecting just white balance then right clicking on the target image and selecting Paste Settings; I've tried it with pasting to just one image and pasting to several images. In all cases, nothing happens at all when I attempt to paste.

I've browsed the forum here and see some posts from a few years ago with a similar problem but the solutiotns there did not help.

Does anyone have suggestions for something I might try?

johnrellis · Accepted Answer

"if the source image is set to Auto you can't copy / paste white balance to other images." To clarify for future readers, since this is a confusing aspect of LR's Copy/Sync settings: LR's White Balance consists of three settings, the mode (the WB drop-down menu items As Shot, Auto, Daylight, ..., Custom),  Temp, and Tint. When you copy/sync White Balance to a target photo, if the mode is As Shot or Auto, then the Temp and Tint from the source photo are ignored, and they are recomputed for the target photo.  If the mode is anything else, then the Temp and Tint numbers are copied exactly from the source photo.

Tom Goodell · Answer

Solution found with more searching: if the source image is set to Auto you can't copy / paste white balance to other images. So just set the source image to Custom without changing its settings (unless you want to...) and then you can paste its setting to other images.

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