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Known Participant
May 23, 2023
Question

"Before" Has the Incorrect White Balance

  • May 23, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 5362 views

Hello,

 

I updated to Ver. 12.3 and noticed that the white balance in Before was wrong when I compared the Before and After of unedited RAW photos(even though they should be the same).

 

I used in-body custom white balance at a venue with LED lights (~4000K), and the RAW photos looked right in the older version. But, after updating to LrC, the Before looked way too warm. Strangely, the unedited RAW photos still had the correct white balance in After. Maybe the software incorrectly switched to "Auto" white balance, instead of "As Ahot"?

 

Additional information:

1. Camera: Sony A7IV

2. Computer: M1 Mac

 

Thank you!

3 replies

krislinus
Participating Frequently
July 11, 2024

Wow, this is still an issue with Lightroom Classic 13.4 in July 2024.

I'm pretty sure it haven't been an issue for me earlier, but I am working on a project where I'm having trouble nailing the whote balance. Then I noticed the Before photo was much warmer.

 

I tried disabling the GPU on my M1 Max 16 inch, but it made no difference.

Participating Frequently
July 18, 2024

Same problem here. Macbook M1 running Sonoma 14.5, LrC v. 13.4. Photos have been in catalog over several LrC versions. "Before" version (\ toggle) shows utterly wrong WB, even when "After" version has been reset (Cmd-Shift-R). "After" version or clicking on "Import" photo in Develop history look ok. Deleting and re-importing photo fixes problem, so it is hard to reproduce. Looks like it tends to occur for indoor photos: correct WB is close to Tungsten, while "Before" version seems to pick up "Daylight" or something similar.

Participating Frequently
July 18, 2024

Forgot to add: 1. these are RAW photos (Fuji RAF). 2. when clicking on the "Import" version in Develop history, the picture looks fine (as I said) but the thumbnail in the Navigator window shows the same wrong WB as the "Before" photo.

CDLHamma
Participant
December 7, 2023

I am seeing this as well on M1 and when I disable the GPU the problem goes away. the white balance I am seeing on "before" is nothing even close to what I have set in camera or set after the fact. I haven't been able to nail down the exact cause of this, though it tends to manifest itself more when I am doing bulk edits from library view, then go into develop view.

TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
May 23, 2023

The WB reported by your camera has zero bearing on your raw data. Raw is raw and only exposure and ISO affect the data. You can set it to anything; the only effect is upon the JPEG preview created by your camera, embedded with the raw and again, this has zero effect on your raw data. The 'correct' WB is what you set in Lightroom Classic or Adobe Camera Raw or any other raw converter, and they all differ from the actual (correctly measured) WB: 

 

 

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
Known Participant
May 23, 2023

Thank you for your reply!

 

I believe you may have misunderstood what I meant. Setting custom white balance in-camera has been working fine for me, and I have no complaint.

 

The problem is that, when I hit the \ key, instead of showing me the unedited raw file (Before) like the older versions did, Ver 12.3 wildly changed the white balance to something else... significantly warmer.

 

I remember Adobe messed up the white balance for Sony RAW files with their new update a couple of years ago. I had to re-installed the older version until they fixed that bug. I hope they can get this one resolved soon because I really want to try the new denoise feature. 

Known Participant
May 26, 2023

Disabling the GPU fixed it for me.

I have the latest studio driver for my Quadro P2000.

Strange that it only affects a small percentage of my photos, I can only find two.

They both contain yellow objects, but other photos with yellow objects are unaffected.


Hi Per,

 

Thank you for chipping in! Disabling GPU (M1 intergrated in my case) fixed it for me too!

 

The other walkaround is to remove the photo from Lr and reimport it. If the photo has edits on it, copy the settings and paste it back after reimport. But that's just too much work.

 

The bug only affects the photos in the 7 out of 8 subfolders of my latest folder. That remaining one folder seems unaffected, regradless whether photos in there are edited or not. Weird!

 

I'm just gonna leave them as they're now. 

 

Thank you again for helping!