White Balance Measurement

[bainbru]

ACR shows white balance measurment with lower tempatures representing colder or bluish tones and the higher tempatures representing warmer tempatures/tones. However other measurement scales of WB tempatures show the opposite with lower tempatures representing warmer tones and higher tempatures representing colder or bluish tomes. Which is correct and why is ACR opposite to the other measurements?

[JP Hess]

I don't profess to be an expert. However, I have been using Lightroom and Photoshop for many years and I don't recall ever seeing the scale represented with the temperatures as you describe. Daylight temperature has always been at 5500, and the lower the number from that point the bluer the color, the higher the number from that point the warmer would be the color when making adjustments. At least that has always been the way it has worked for me.

[bainbru]

sent twice by mistake Thanks for the help. What I am referring to is that Adobe's measurement of white balance differs from the measurement used by others. Adobe indicates lower temps are bluish and colder and higher temps are warmer. I you google white balance measurement the results are the opposite. Lower temps are warmer and higher temps are colder. See attached.

[bainbru]

Thanks for the help. What I am referring to is that Adobe's measurement of white balance differs from the measurement used by others. Adobe indicates lower temps are bluish and colder and higher temps are warmer. I you google white balance measurement the results are the opposite. Lower temps are warmer and higher temps are colder. See attached.

[Chuck Uebele]

I'm not sure either, but as Jim mentioned, 5500 is daylight. Say 3500 is incandescent, which is a warmer light, so you would need more blue to balance it, hence 3500 in ACR is bluer than 5500.

[bainbru]

See reply and image sent to Jim. Adobe's measurement differs from others.

[JP Hess]

That is an interesting observation. I just looked at some references on Google and discovered the same thing. The only answer I can offer is that perhaps the Adobe way is offering compensating numbers. I'm not a professional photographer, have never claimed to be. Perhaps someone with more knowledge and understanding will be able to explain this.

[Chuck Uebele · Accepted solution]

That's what I'm thinking. It's not what the color temp is, but the compenstation for it.

[elie_dinur]

>>"It's not what the color temp is, but the compenstation for it."

Precisely. White Balancing means applying a correction for the color cast caused by light of a given temperature. You tell LR what that temperature is and LR applies the appropriate adjustment.

[TheDigitalDog]

This is utterly by design. What you're adjusting is the compensation so to speak. So when you adjust to a higher value, you're not assigning that newer value, you're compensating and hence, it 'seems backwards' but isn't and by design. Exactly as Chuck describes. 

[TheDigitalDog · Accepted solution]

Page 79, by the late, great Bruce Fraser explains this in his Camera Raw with CS2 book (an oldie but a goodie everyone need s to read):

"Temperature. The Temperature control lets you specify the color temperature of the lighting in Kevins, thereby setting the blue-yellow (not orange) color balance. Lowering the color temperature makes the image more blue to compensate for the yellower light; raising the color temperature makes the image more yellow, to compensate for the bluer light. If this seems counterintutive - we think of higher color temperature as bluer and lower one's as yellower- the trick is to remember that the Temperature control compensates for the color temperature of the light, so if you tell Camera Raw that the light is bluer, it makes the image yellower."