You can also adjust temperature using the camera calibration section. In fact, I know of one person who prefers using RGB over temp/tint, and uses cam-cal exclusively for white balance adjustment.
One option: create infrared preset that has a cool bias to cam-cal, then go the rest of the way with the temp/tint sliders.
Note: presets lump the camera profile in with the shadow-tint/rgb sliders, but you can take the camera profile out using a text editor (then restart Lightroom), to have an rgb preset that will work with any profile.
Another option: create a DNG color profile for infrared.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12243933#M1746May 04, 2011
May 04, 2011
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I tried to use calibration controls, but didn't got results like in Capture One. Maybe I did something wrong. The same for profile. It worth to try again.
But the point is the color temperature is much more user-friendly control. And if we have temperature over 20,000K, why we can't get lower than 2000K? Defenitely this is artificial limitation.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246858#M3305May 04, 2011
May 04, 2011
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Yes. It's a temperature of the ideal black-body radiator, it can be 0K. The candle light is starting from ~1500 K, the dark red glow of the heated metal have temperature about 800 K.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246856#M3304May 04, 2011
May 04, 2011
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Thanks Alex. NX2 also has very constrained temperature ranges - I never understood why one can not adjust "all the way" in both directions, whatever that would mean...
Lightroom (and Photoshop) white balance color temperature can't go below 2000K, which is a major pain for IR photography (and for candlelight and low-power tungsten too). Other software can do this, why not Adobe's?
But this still makes you dependent on going B&W, though if it went lower on the scale and you were doing it for effect would it not be useful vs. being constrained to just B&W too or even if B&W useful?
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12243921#M1740Feb 24, 2012
Feb 24, 2012
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Yes, a lot of the light sources that we photograph at night have extremely low color temperatures. Sodium vapor lights for example. If we could choose lower color temps we would be able to balance these lights in a way that we cannot do now.
While somewhat "niche", it is annoying that Adobe products don't support a more expanded white balance that would include IR images. Even with a custom white balance set in camera, Adobe products don't support the more extreme white balances required for IR photography. Having to import RAW files into Nikon Capture NX-D and then convert them to TIFF before importing into LR is not optimal from either storage or workflow perspectives. Please consider a fix to this.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246845#M3298Feb 23, 2019
Feb 23, 2019
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Doesn't work anymore with the newer CC versions. What to do now? The DNG profile editor always throws the error "cannot complete operation" and even with a workaround (converting DNG to lowest version) eventually saves broken profile files.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246842#M3297Feb 23, 2019
Feb 23, 2019
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If you're using an Adobe DNG Profile installer downloaded prior to January 2018 it may be causing your issue. At the below link the installer has been updated. Yes, it still says September 2012, but it has been updated with the new installer. Give it a try!
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246840#M3296Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019
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Thank you very much for the suggestions!
At first, the new version also had some problems with the DNG images I loaded (still "cannot complete operation"). But then I tried this:
I downloaded the "DNG converter" and set my Camera (a Pentax K-5) to save Pentax PEF files (instead of DNG, those didn't work either). I set the converter to save the PEF as the lowest DNG version possible and loaded it into the DNG profile editor. It worked! No more program errors.
Also, the profile has been recognized by Camera Raw and now I am able to work on IR photos again!
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12246838#M3295Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019
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Glad you finally got it to work! I have reported the issue to Adobe Engineering, but at least for now you have a workaround.
You may also find it helpful to use the new Enhanced camera profile tools. This allows applying settings inside the camera profile. In the case of IR images you can set WB to 2000 Temp, which will be applied in addition to the manual WB setting in the Basic panel. You can also add other settings as well. Below is the download link with instructions and an example on creating Enhanced Camera profiles.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/12655769#M4091Jan 13, 2022
Jan 13, 2022
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Great. Thank you. I have been searching for a solution since moving to the K3iii. This is the only solution that seems to work. I think that the Editor does not like the Pentax camera DNG from PEF version but is happy with the Converters own version of the same process. (I have in the past created the profiles for other Pentax cameras without issues!). This might help people with people with other camera makes attempting to load RAW files.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/13631565#M5362Mar 07, 2023
Mar 07, 2023
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Hi!
I work as a professional photographer and for the last 5 years I have shot a lot of analogue jobs.
I like to tune my negatives myself without using Negative Pro ect. but have not been able to do so in LR classic or LR because the White balance Temp. slider only goes down to 2000K. We need the White balance temp. slider to go down to 1000K, to be able to set the right white balance on many of my negatives. Capture 1 has this possiblity, but I would like to move back to LR classic for many reasons. So me with many other film shooters would really appreciate this. This is actually so important to me, it will decide if I can move back to LR or not. Thank you in advance! 🙂
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/14822755#M5916Aug 26, 2024
Aug 26, 2024
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Though I'm not doing something like taking IR photos, one room in which I take photos sometimes requires a color temperature below 2000ºK to look right; I end up at 2000º and then have to manually tweak the colors to get things just a bit cooler.
I don't want to switch to something like Capture One but admit to drooling when I can eyedropper white balance with it and it instantly comes up with a perfect white balance at 1925º or so.
Most of the time a temperature of 2000º to 2050º is perfect, so I don't need that much extra latitude, but when you do, you do.
I've been hoping for this since Lightroom 6, but it seems like a feature Adobe isn't interested in implementing.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/15071988#M6013Jan 05, 2025
Jan 05, 2025
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Any good new workarounds for this? I have a Sony camera, so shoot ARW's. I am doing 10's of thousands of negatives, so also want to avoid the extra step of exporting to TIF's and reimporting to get a lower temperature.
/t5/camera-raw-ideas/p-color-temperature-below-2000k/idc-p/15081338#M6016Jan 10, 2025
Jan 10, 2025
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I now photograph my negatives with some old fashioned colour balance filters - an 80B plus an 80C - which increase the colour temperature of the resulting negative raw file, making it easier to balance.
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