Context: I took some photos with friends. It was evening and we were inside, only one weak light on. Possibly incandescent bulb but I didn’t check. Going by memory it was quite dark (I went up to 6400 ISO…) and the light was very warm.
Now here’s my problem. The camera had set the color temperature at around 2900/3000 K. The photos were IMO too reddish.
So I tried adjusting it with Lightroom’s “eye dropper”, selecting a wall as reference for “white” (Not my house, but I think it was white). Temperature went to about 2400K, but they were now too cold and the photos’ joyous atmosphere vaporized. We were celebrating and having a poker with alcohol, yet they now looked like photos taken in a morgue…
I don’t think there was something objectively wrong, but the feeling is not the one I had while shooting them. Nor the one I wanted people to have while looking at them.
I manually changed the photos to about 2650K (didn’t touch “tint”, only “temperature”). They didn’t look too orange, but at the same time they didn’t feel depressing. I think it was the best compromise I could get.
How do you guys do it? I’m no professional so I went by feeling. What would you have done in this case? Should I have left Lightroom’s auto choice, despite the “morgue effect”?
P.S. Shooting RAW with a Nikon D3500, in case it matters.
If I think the white balance is off I’ll start by using the eye dropper to see what lightroom thinks it should be and then do some adjustments afterwards. So it ends up being by feeling.
Which is why I can come back a week later and feel like I should change it slightly again.
I think a dark imagine can be difficult to find a satisfactory WB.
That was my feeling as well. Thank you for confirming the process I was using made sense!