Skip to main content
F
florianf81393450
Participant
December 9, 2023
Question

Auto white balance produces pink/yellow color cast across multiple photos

  • December 9, 2023
  • 2 replies
  • 789 views

Since shooting with a Sony A7M4 I realized a strange behaviour of Lightroom.

Unfortunately the Auto White Balance of the Sony cameras is simply not as good (never has been for what I am doing) - I'm used to be required to correct WB in post. However, Lightroom auto is giving really really bad results lately - producing a completly unnatural a pink/yellow color cast.

I'm using LRCC as well as Classic. Both programs behave similarly bad.

My screen is calibrated and I use a calibrated printer with ICC profiles, i.e. I have some basic know-how in color management. The different devices are calibrated independently and the color cast is universal.

I am attaching a photo that is essentially OOC, just exposure +0.5

Then one using "Auto Edit" with "Adobe Color" profile and one with "Adobe Landscape" - both with "Auto" Edit.

In contast, in Capture One it takes very little tweaking to the auto settings to get what I consider an "as was" rendition of the scene.

 

Please note I selected one example but observed this behaviour across multiple types of photos shot with the Sony A4M4, and the Fuji X-T3 (with the difference that with the Fuji the Auto-WhiteBalance is usually perfect - at least for my personal requirements - and does not require any tweaking).

 

 

 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    F
    florianf81393450Author
    Participant
    December 9, 2023

    Sorry, but you're not trying to help, just trying to be right.

    I wrote that it happens across multiple shots of multiple scenes.

    Also you're telling me what I did instead of trying to understand what I wrote. Believe me I tried auto wb and other options. All with very similar results.

     

    And why should the auto wb of a powerful software like Adobe lightroom fail where a fuji in camera white balance works perfectly well?

    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 9, 2023

    As you claim I'm not trying to help, I will not react anymore.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 9, 2023

    You are not using 'Auto Edit' in this screenshot, but 'Auto WB'. Contrary to what you may think, that is not a setting that reads the auto WB settings from the camera ('as shot' does that if the camera used AWB), but a kind of 'Auto Colorize', where Lightroom tries to determine the WB based on the contents of the image. As you can imagine, this will depend very much on the scene and might fail if a scene has very dominant colors. A landscape with a blue sky and blue water contains so much blue, that the Auto WB option in Lightroom is bound to over-compensate for that. Solution: do not use 'Auto WB' but try 'Daylight' or do it manually.

     

    BTW, I have a Sony A7M4 too and I don't see more problems with the WB of this camera than with any of my other cameras.

     

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices