Enhance the low light

Experiment with white balance settings to find a palette to suit your night-time shots

Shooting in raw gives you the opportunity to alter the White Balance setting in editing software, which can be a real benefit when you’re faced with a subject that’s lit by a range of different lights at night. As well as using presets to remove colour casts, you can use the tools available in raw software to enhance the mood, such as shifting the white balance towards blue to cool things down or towards magenta to get add a ‘tech noir’ feel.

You can also use the Eyedropper Tool to pick out a neutral area to base the white balance on – such as a grey pavement – if you want to remove a colour cast from a scene. When you click on an area, the software adds the opposite colour. Select a yellow object, for example, and it will add more blue, which will also affect other parts of the image.

Glow in the dark You can use Affinity Photo’s White Balance Tool to base the white balance on a specific point (here, the red ‘I’).

Mood boost Biasing the white balance towards blue and magenta gives the shot a more moody, late night feel.