Mixing White Balance With A Graduated Filter

When creating your digital images, don’t really feel constrained to a worldwide white steadiness setting

One of many first changes I make when creating a RAW file is to set white steadiness. It’s a good suggestion to start out there earlier than making plenty of different changes—generally a tweak to white steadiness is all a picture actually wants, particularly in case your publicity was right in-camera.

However what if a worldwide white steadiness setting doesn’t lead to a picture that matches your interpretation of the scene? 

With Lightroom’s Graduated Filter instrument, it’s straightforward to use totally different white steadiness settings to particular areas of a picture, particularly when you might have a clear, straight horizons like on this instance.

My unprocessed RAW file, taken with a Canon EOS R, is a pleasant sundown scene, however the ocean foreground feels flat in comparison with the dramatic sky. 

Setting the white steadiness to “Daylight” added a little bit further pop to the sky, however didn’t have a lot of an impact on the water; for that space, I really most popular the look of a cooler white steadiness temperature. 

That’s the place Lightroom’s Graduated Filter instrument is available in.

To make use of this instrument in Lightroom’s Develop module, click on on its icon within the toolbar slightly below the Histogram, then click on and drag up or down on a degree within the picture alongside the transition the place you need the the impact to happen. The larger distance you drag, the extra graduated the transition will likely be. On this instance, I clicked on the horizon line and dragged upward solely very barely, as I wished the transition to be laborious. Holding down the Shift key whenever you do that will preserve the transition line straight. 

You’ll be able to toggle a Masks Overlay to see which areas will likely be affected by the Graduated Filter (Instruments > Adjustment Masks Overlay > Present Overlay, or use keyboard shortcut “O”).

With the Graduated Filter in place, I decreased the colour temperature till I preferred the look. I additionally boosted the publicity of the water.

Right here’s a before-and-after comparability. The ensuing picture is an interpretation of the scene that I like significantly better than what resulted with a worldwide white steadiness setting.

That is simply one of many many ways in which Lightroom’s Graduated Filter instrument can be utilized to rapidly make localized changes.