How does White Balance Shift work, and when would you use it?

Andrew Ward, Finchley

Brian Says… White Balance Shift biases the selected white balance in a combination of blue-amber and magentagreen directions. Each shift in the blue-amber direction is roughly equivalent to 5 mired (micro reciprocal degrees).

If you shoot JPEG and want to get the colours correct out of the camera, White Balance Shift may be helpful. If you shoot Raw then you can perform the White Balance Shift in post-production. Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw’s white balance sliders label the blue-amber direction ‘Temperature’ and the green-magenta direction ‘Tint’.

I sometimes use White Balance Shift in a studio if a light modifier has a very warm colour, like a gold brolly, though it is often simpler to use a grey card and set a Custom WB.

White Balance shift can impose a bias to blue-amber and greenmagenta colour balance, like Temperature and Tint in Lightroom