---
title: "White Balance and Color Temperature Guide | colorgrade.video"
description: "White balance and colour temperature explained: why cameras get it wrong, how to neutralise a cast with Pick white and the RGB parade, and when to use wheels."
url: https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance
---

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3. White balance

Chapter 3 of 13 · Basics · 8 min read

# White Balance and Color Temperature

White balance is the correction that makes neutral things neutral. When it is right, white paper looks white, grey concrete looks grey and skin looks like skin; when it is wrong, the whole picture takes on the colour of the light it was filmed under. Because every later decision, from a creative look to matching shots, assumes a neutral starting point, it is usually the first colour correction in a grade.

If you only need to remove a cast, [fix white balance in a video](https://colorgrade.video/white-balance-video) does it in one click. This chapter goes further: what colour temperature and tint actually are, why cameras get them wrong, how to read a cast on the **Parade**, when the **Offset** or **Gain** wheels do a better job than **Temperature**, and what to do when one shot has two kinds of light. The demo footage is chart-warm-cast, the test chart lit by tungsten.

Video guide

## White Balance with Pick White and the RGB Parade

Duration:  0:39 

Your browser can't play this video. [Download the MP4](https://colorgrade.video/media/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade/video.mp4) or read the[full transcript](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade).

Chapters

1. [ Play from  0:00 Reading the cast ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade#t=0)
2. [ Play from  0:08 Pick white ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade#t=8)
3. [ Play from  0:23 Warmth on purpose ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade#t=23)
4. [ Play from  0:36 Try it yourself ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade#t=36)

English captions [Watch page and full transcript ](https://colorgrade.video/videos/white-balance-with-rgb-parade) 

## Key takeaways

* A neutral surface reflects red, green and blue equally; white balance scales the channels until it does again.
* **Temperature** runs from blue to amber, **Tint** from green to magenta; most casts need a little of both.
* Use **Pick white** on a mid-to-light grey lit like your subject, then confirm on the **Parade**.
* A cast that grows towards white is a gain problem; one that is equal at every level is an offset problem.
* Correct first, then add warmth as a separate, adjustable choice on its own layer.

## In this chapter

1. [ 1. Colour temperature and tint ](#colour-temperature-and-tint)
2. [ 2. Why cameras get it wrong ](#why-cameras-get-it-wrong)
3. [ 3. Neutralise a cast with Pick white and the parade ](#neutralise-with-pick-white)
4. [ 4. Temperature and Tint versus the Offset and Gain wheels ](#temperature-vs-wheels)
5. [ 5. Mixed lighting ](#mixed-lighting)
6. [ 6. Correction first, warmth on purpose ](#creative-warmth)
7. [ 7. White balance a shot on the parade ](#try-it)

## Colour temperature and tint

Colour temperature describes the colour of light on a line from warm to cool, measured in kelvin (K). The scale comes from physics: a perfect black body heated to about 2,000 K glows orange, around 5,500 K it glows roughly white, and hotter still it turns blue. Candles, tungsten bulbs, the sun and the open sky all sit close to that line, which is why most casts are simply “too warm” or “too cool”.

__Typical light sources, and how they look on a camera set to daylight__
| Light                        | Approx. temperature | On a daylight setting |
| ---------------------------- | ------------------- | --------------------- |
| Candle, firelight            | 1,800-2,000 K       | Deep orange           |
| Household tungsten, warm LED | 2,700-3,200 K       | Orange-yellow         |
| Sunrise, sunset              | 2,500-3,500 K       | Golden                |
| Midday sun                   | 5,000-5,600 K       | Neutral               |
| Overcast sky                 | 6,500-7,500 K       | Slightly blue         |
| Open shade, blue sky only    | 8,000 K and above   | Clearly blue          |

Note the inversion that confuses everyone: a camera set to 3,200 K expects warm light, so it adds blue to compensate. Lower kelvin settings on a camera therefore make the picture bluer. In the studio there is no inversion: **Temperature** moves the picture itself, positive towards amber and negative towards blue.

Tint is the other axis. Fluorescent tubes, cheap LED panels and some sodium and mercury street lights emit an uneven spectrum that sits off the black-body line, usually towards green. No amount of warming or cooling removes that; **Tint**, which runs from green to magenta, does.

## Why cameras get it wrong

Your visual system recalibrates to the light in a room within seconds. A camera has to estimate it from the picture alone, and automatic white balance relies on assumptions that are often false:

* That the scene averages out to grey. A green lawn, a red wall or a blue swimming pool drags the estimate towards the opposite colour, so the camera adds magenta to grass and cyan to the red wall.
* That the brightest area is white. At sunset the brightest area is the golden sky, so the camera neutralises the very warmth you wanted to keep.
* That there is one light. A face lit by a window on one side and a lamp on the other has no single correct balance.
* That the light stays the same. Walk from indoors to outdoors and the camera re-guesses mid-shot, so the colour drifts over a few seconds.

Fixed presets avoid the drift but are only as good as the guess: a camera left on a tungsten setting outside turns everything blue. Fortunately, as long as no channel is clipped, white balance is one of the most forgiving corrections to make afterwards.

## Neutralise a cast with Pick white and the parade

A neutral surface reflects red, green and blue equally. If the camera recorded it with more red than blue, the difference came from the light, and since that light fell on everything, the same correction fixes the whole frame. **Pick white** (**W**) automates this: click something that should be neutral and it measures the patch in linear light, then sets **Temperature** and **Tint** to the values that neutralise it. The sliders stay editable afterwards.

**Temperature** works as a camera does, by scaling the channels in linear light (±100 is ±0.75 of a stop of red against blue), and it keeps the luminance of white the same, so a correction changes colour without making the shot lighter or heavier.

[ ![The test chart under tungsten light with an orange cast, beside an RGB parade where the red trace sits well above the green and the blue trace sits lowest over the grey wedge.](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/parade-warm-cast.webp)  (enlarge image) ](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/parade-warm-cast.webp) 

A tungsten cast on the **Parade**: red high, blue low, even on neutral grey.

### Choosing a good reference

* A light or mid grey, not the brightest white: a near-white patch may have one channel clipped, which skews the reading. On the chart, the middle steps of the grey wedge are ideal.
* Lit by the same light as the subject. A white wall in the sun says nothing about a face in the shade.
* Truly neutral: cream paint, ivory fabric and “white” objects catching a coloured reflection all mislead.

### Confirm on the scopes

On the **Parade**, the red, green and blue traces over the neutral area should now be the same height, and on the **Vectorscope** the neutral patches should sit on the centre dot. Check more than one level: if the mid steps of the grey wedge line up but the top or bottom steps don’t, the cast isn’t a simple white balance error, and the wheels are the better tool. See [how to read video scopes](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/video-scopes) for a refresher.

[ ![The same chart after Pick white on the grey wedge: neutral greys and natural colours, with the red, green and blue parade traces aligned and the neutral patches centred on the vectorscope.](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/parade-neutralised.webp)  (enlarge image) ](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/parade-neutralised.webp) 

After **Pick white** on a mid-grey step, the traces line up.

## Temperature and Tint versus the Offset and Gain wheels

**Temperature** and **Tint** constrain the correction to the axes that real light follows, which makes them fast and hard to misuse. The colour wheels are unconstrained: the puck can push in any direction, so they fix casts that don’t follow the light, and casts that are not proportional to it. The shape of the cast on the parade tells you which to reach for:

__Reading a cast on the parade__
| The parade shows              | Kind of cast                                | Best fix                               |
| ----------------------------- | ------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------- |
| Gap grows from black to white | Coloured light (proportional)               | Pick white, Temperature, Tint, or Gain |
| Same gap at every level       | Added colour: flare, haze, a bad conversion | Offset                                 |
| Gap only at the bottom        | Tinted blacks                               | Lift                                   |
| Gap mostly in the middle      | Midtone cast, often from a LUT              | Gamma                                  |
| Gap changes during the clip   | Auto white balance drift                    | Keyframes                              |

**Gain** multiplies, so like a light source its effect is largest in the lightest tones and zero at black; it is the wheel equivalent of a white balance, though it works on the display-encoded signal rather than in linear light. **Offset** adds the same amount everywhere, which is right for flare, haze or a cast baked in by a poor conversion, where colour has been added on top of the picture. The [colour wheels chapter](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/color-wheels) covers the maths and the R, G, B fields that show each wheel’s exact effect.

Try it in the studio

After **Pick white**, if a slight cast remains only in the shadows, open **Wheels** and drag the **Lift** puck a very short way in the opposite direction. Watch the bottom of the **Parade** close up while the top stays aligned.

## Mixed lighting

A global white balance can only neutralise one light. With daylight from a window and tungsten from a lamp in the same frame, balancing for one leaves the other warm or cool. Decide which light matters, almost always the one on the faces, and balance for that. A little warmth from a practical lamp or a little blue from a window usually reads as natural, even pleasant.

When the other light is genuinely distracting, correct it separately. In **Secondary**, choose **Add a secondary layer**, isolate the problem area with a **Gradient** or **Circle** window, or a qualifier on its colour, and use the layer’s own **Temperature** and **Tint**. Because the change lives on its own layer, it doesn’t disturb the main balance. The [secondary colour correction chapter](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/secondary-color-correction) shows the technique step by step.

## Correction first, warmth on purpose

Neutral is a starting point, not a goal. Warm light reads as comfort, nostalgia or late afternoon; cool light as calm, clinical or cold. The craft is to make those choices deliberately rather than inherit them from the camera.

Keep correction and style apart. Neutralise on the **Correction** layer, then in **Layers** choose **Add layer** and warm or cool that layer with **Temperature**. Its **Opacity** becomes a dial for how much warmth you want, and you can switch it off to check the neutral version at any time. For a split between warm and cool tones, use **Split toning** in **Creative**, or start from a look: [teal and orange](https://colorgrade.video/teal-and-orange) and [cinematic grades](https://colorgrade.video/cinematic-color-grading) both build on a neutral base. The [creative looks chapter](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/creative-looks) explains how.

[ ![The Layers panel listing Footage, Correction, an added layer and Look, the added layer set to 60 percent opacity, while the chart on the stage shows a gentle deliberate warmth.](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/warm-layer-opacity.webp)  (enlarge image) ](https://colorgrade.video/guides/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance/warm-layer-opacity.webp) 

Warmth on its own layer, dialled in with **Opacity**.

## White balance a shot on the parade

Remove a colour cast with Pick white, confirm it on the RGB parade, then add warmth back on a separate layer.

1. 1  
### Open the clip with the parade
Choose **Open video or photo**, switch to **Pro**, and show **Parade** and **Vectorscope** in the **Scopes** column.
2. 2  
### Pick a neutral reference
In **Adjust**, press **Pick white** (**W**) and click a light-to-mid grey surface lit by the same light as your subject.
3. 3  
### Check the traces
On the **Parade**, the red, green and blue traces over the neutral area should line up; on the **Vectorscope**, neutrals should sit at the centre.
4. 4  
### Fix what is left with the wheels
If only the shadows still lean one way, open **Wheels** and nudge the **Lift** puck the opposite way; if the whole trace is shifted, use **Offset**.
5. 5  
### Add warmth on purpose
In **Layers**, choose **Add layer**, raise **Temperature** on that layer in **Adjust**, and set its **Opacity** to taste.

## White balance: questions

### What is color temperature in video?

The colour of the light a scene was filmed under, measured in kelvin. Low values such as 2,700-3,200 K are warm tungsten light; around 5,500 K is daylight; higher values are the bluish light of shade and overcast skies. White balance compensates for it so neutral objects look neutral.

### Should I set white balance in camera or fix it in post?

Set it in camera when you can, ideally to a fixed value rather than auto, so it doesn’t drift mid-shot. Fixing it afterwards works well as long as no colour channel is clipped, but 8-bit, heavily compressed footage tolerates smaller corrections before banding or noise appears.

### What does the Tint slider do?

**Tint** moves the picture between green and magenta, the axis that **Temperature** can’t reach. It removes the green cast of fluorescent tubes and cheap LED lights, or the magenta some cameras add. **Pick white** sets it together with **Temperature**.

### How do I white balance a shot with mixed lighting?

Balance for the light on the subject, usually the faces, and accept some warmth or coolness from the other source. If it distracts, isolate that area on a secondary layer with a window or qualifier and correct it with that layer’s own **Temperature** and **Tint**.

### Why does Pick white make my video look worse?

Usually the reference wasn’t truly neutral (cream walls, ivory fabric, a coloured reflection) or it was so light that one channel was clipped. Pick a light-to-mid grey lit by the same light as your subject, or try several points and keep the one that makes skin look right.

### Is white balance the same as color correction?

It is one part of it. Colour correction also covers levels, contrast, saturation and matching shots; white balance only removes the colour of the light. It usually comes first because every other colour judgement depends on a neutral starting point.

[ ← Previous: chapter 2 Contrast and tonal range ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/contrast-and-tonal-range) [ Next: chapter 4 → Colour wheels ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/color-wheels) 

## Keep going

* [ Video scopes Read the waveform, RGB parade, vectorscope and histogram, and check levels with false colour and clipping views. ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/video-scopes)
* [ Colour wheels What each colour wheel does in plain maths, how the master ring and puck differ, when to use log wheels, and what the primary bars add. ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/color-wheels)
* [ Secondary correction Isolate one colour or one area of the frame with a qualifier or a power window, check the matte, and grade that part alone. ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/secondary-color-correction)
* [ Fix white balance in a video Remove a yellow, blue or green cast with one click, or warm and cool on purpose. ](https://colorgrade.video/white-balance-video)
* [ Color correct a video online Neutral, accurate colour from one button, with scopes and sliders to refine it. ](https://colorgrade.video/color-correct-video)

All 13 chapters 
1. [ 1\. Video scopes ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/video-scopes)  · Basics
2. [ 2\. Contrast and tonal range ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/contrast-and-tonal-range)  · Basics
3. [ 3\. White balance ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/white-balance)  · Basics
4. [ 4\. Colour wheels ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/color-wheels)  · Intermediate
5. [ 5\. Curves ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/curves)  · Intermediate
6. [ 6\. Secondary correction ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/secondary-color-correction)  · Intermediate
7. [ 7\. Skin tones ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/skin-tones)  · Intermediate
8. [ 8\. Log footage and LUTs ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/log-footage-and-luts)  · Advanced
9. [ 9\. Creative looks ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/creative-looks)  · Advanced
10. [ 10\. Shot matching ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/shot-matching)  · Advanced
11. [ 11\. Delivery and export ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/delivery)  · Advanced
12. [ 12\. Grading workflow ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/workflow)  · Intermediate
13. [ 13\. Common mistakes ](https://colorgrade.video/color-grading-tutorial/mistakes)  · Basics