Setting White Balance in Lightroom Classic

Here are six of my favorite shortcuts for setting an image’s White Balance in Lightroom Classic:

Selecting the White Balance Tool — Tap “W” to select the White Balance Selector tool.

• Tapping the “W” key in another module (such as the Library) will automatically switch to the Develop module and select the White Balance Selector tool.

• By default,  the White Balance Selector tool is dismissed (put away) after a single click in the image preview area. To disable the “Auto Dismiss” feature, uncheck it in the toolbar. If “Auto Dismiss” is disabled, tap the Escape key (or the “W” key again) to dismiss the tool.

Show and Hide the Loupe — While using the White Balance Selector tool, use the Loupe checkbox in the Toolbar to hide/show the Loupe.

White Balance Sample Area — The White Balance Selector Tool’s sample area is dependent on zoom level (zoom in to sample a smaller area).

Auto White Balance — Command + Shift + U (Mac) | Control  + Shift + U  applies an Auto White Balance correction.

Temperature and Tint Sliders — Shift -double click the Temperature or Tint adjustment sliders to apply Auto Temperature and Auto Tint controls separately from one another.

Raw vs JPEG Files — The White Balance values displayed for RAW and JPEG files will differ. The Temperature and Tint sliders will display numeric values from -100 to +100 for JPEG files as opposed to Temperature (2000-50000) and Tint (-150 – +150) values for RAW files.

Note: If you include White Balance settings in a preset applied to a Raw file, and then apply that preset to a JPEG, Lightroom tries to apply the equivalent white balance adjustment (but using the JPEG scale). Therefore, the White Balance adjustment on a JPEG (using a preset based on a raw file) is necessarily an approximation and results will vary somewhat on a case by case basis.

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