topic Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature in EOS DSLR & Mirrorless Cameras

Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

barnettgs — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:11:01 GMT

Hello,

I was wondering that does any of Canon White Balance Presets (Daylight, Cloudly etrc) changes tint?

Unlike the K Colour Temperature?

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

stevet1 — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:47:23 GMT

Barnett,

If I understand your question correctly, the answer would be yes.

On my camera, Daylight is equivalent to 5200K. Cloudy is equivalent to 6000K, and Shade to about 7000K. Tungsten is in the 3200-3500 range.

You can find these online

Steve Thomas

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

barnettgs — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:55:36 GMT

Thanks, yes I know these K figures for the presets, although I was trying to find the information on Canon site, whether the presets do change the tint or not.

I couldn't find anything other that the Google's AI search says Canon does!

If so, would I be better off using a custom K Colour temperature that will not change the tint?

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

stevet1 — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:03:36 GMT

barnettgs,

I'm not sure about the tint. Try taking two pictures of the exact same thing. One with the Daylight preset, and one with 5200K, and compare them. See if there is a difference.

Steve Thomas

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

TimBird — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 05:36:27 GMT

Theoretically speaking, Color Temperature is the shifting of color balance relative to frequency of the frequency of the waves in the light as it illuminates the scene. Put simply, in early morning and late afternoon, the light from the sun appears to be more amber/red in color, while light in the midday times when the sun is higher in the sky tends to be more blue. But understand that ALL color (perception) varies on a continuum… similar to the way the colors of the rainbow blend together rather than being separated by distinct demarcations between colors. That in mind, a change in color temperature leads to a shift in adjacent colors in the spectrum. IE: Blue (a color primary) is close to violet and cyan (color secondaries.) Similarly, Red (primary) is neighbored by magenta and orange/yellow (secondaries.) So, a shift in color temperature changes the balance of color secondaries as much as the primaries. So this, by definition, must involve color secondaries… or “tint”

as for Canon specifically, there is a definite color science in the design and performance of the imaging sensors in the cameras that distinguish them from other brands (most notably, Sony.) From this, one might assume that all manufacturers have a color “bias” based on how their sensors capture and process color. Canon is preferred by many photographers BECAUSE of its color science and how it favors certain types of photography… ie: people vs landscapes vs studio portraits, etc.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

kvbarkley — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:19:31 GMT

I am not sure what you mean by “tint”, but it certainly changes the colors in the image. For example, if you shoot with daylight color balance on a scene lit by fluorescent lights, the colors will be greenish. Shooting with the fluorescent color balance will correct those colors to what the eye perceives.
thw white balance changes the colors because our visual system changes the perceived colors based on the color of the light.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

Jkarl — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:25:18 GMT

One way to see what the white balance presets do with the color is to open a raw file in Canon DPP and change the presets or the actual temperature settings.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

johnrmoyer — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 13:48:31 GMT

@barnettgs wrote:

Thanks, yes I know these K figures for the presets, although I was trying to find the information on Canon site, whether the presets do change the tint or not.

I couldn't find anything other that the Google's AI search says Canon does!

If so, would I be better off using a custom K Colour temperature that will not change the tint?

I cannot remember where I read it, but this is my impression. I hope some of my guesses might be helpful anyway.

It seems to me that Canon uses a three dimensional color model and that temperature Kelvin is a curve line through that solid. It is difficult to get from in camera color temperature to exactly what changes were made to the direction or location of that curve. The only promise I have seen from Canon is that the "Standard" picture style will produce similar images from different models of Canon cameras.

I seem to remember reading that Canon uses either HSL or HSV color model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

Canon DPP and Style editor offer a simplified interface to this three dimensional space. If using another raw developer and not DPP, then one might use picture style "Faithful" or "Neutral" in camera or have DPP save a linear 16 bit TIFF. Gimp also offers a simplified interface: https://docs.gimp.org/2.10/en/gimp-tool-hue-saturation.html

When editing in DPP, ones specifies departures the in camera settings and not absolute values. I would prefer to also have access to the parameters for the color curve being used and not just parameters for departure from the in camera color curve.

Newer Canon cameras have an option to use the PQ color space: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_quantizer by setting the camera to capture a HEIF image. In this case, the color model is set by the standard. It seems to me that the behavior of color temperature is then altered.

A 2 dimensional version of Kelvin line:

I have also found some of these papers interesting: https://www.color.org/whitepapers.xalter and this one describes PQ: https://www.color.org/hdr/04-Timo_Kunkel.pdf

https://snapshot.canon-asia.com/article/eng/4-ways-to-capture-colours-more-accurately-in-photography lists the Canon camera color temperature presets.

Re: Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

stevet1 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 14:48:26 GMT

barnettgs asked

"was wondering that does any of Canon White Balance Presets (Daylight, Cloudly etrc) changes tint?

Unlike the K Colour Temperature?"

Tint is defined in the dictionary as "any of various shades of a color"

Take red for example when you say, "Red", are you talking about Ruby red, or Cherry Red, or Rasberry Red, or Fire Hydrant Red?

I don't know if there is any way of determining if a White Balance Preset changes the tint from its corresponding Kelvin temperature, other than to do as I suggested earlier and take two pictures of the exact same thing , one at a Preset and at its corresponding Kelvin setting and compare them.

You might get a variation, because I think the Presets are an estimate, or even a range of temperatures.

Steve Thomas

Re: Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

johnrmoyer — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:24:59 GMT

The "tint" in question appears to me to be labeled "hue" in camera menus, in DPP, and in the Canon style editor. It provides adjustment along a second dimension on the color model and lightness or saturation would be the third dimension depending upon whether HSV or HSL. Changing the hue will change the apparent tint.

At best, temperature Kelvin describes the peak of a distribution and not the shape of the distribution nor is place in the 3d model.

Since the PQ color space is defined by the standard, one might be able to see how changing color temperature changes hue by setting the camera to record HIF files.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2100

25 page PDF https://www.color.org/groups/displays/20190215_High_Dynamic_Range_imaging_and_Hybrid_Log-Gamma.pdf about the role of ICC when using ITU-R Recommendation BT.2100 mentions how PQ fits in.

Re: Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

justadude — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:45:39 GMT

To put the answer in as simple terms as possible, the answer is "Yes". And to clarify, the only reason I am saying simple, is not meant to be insulting, but instead the opposite because I believe you are over thinking it.

White balance affects the overall tone of a photo. The tone consists of Temperature (blue to yellow) and Tint (green to magenta) which again, I am sure you know. Using a in camera preset changes both of those. The main reason is that the WB presets like daylight and cloudy are going to mostly move the temperature, while the WB presets tungsten and flourescent will mostly move the tint. When you adjust only the K color on a grid, moving the point left to right adjusts the temperature, while moving the point up and down adjusts the tint. Any of the in camera WB presets moves both of these.

So if you only want to adjust temperature, and not the tint, then use the k color grid in the WB settings instead of the WB presets.

I mostly know this due to the odd WB settings I need to adjust for my infrared photography at various wavelengths.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

barnettgs — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 15:46:30 GMT

Thanks, I have just done that and I could not tell the difference. I guess custom K Colour temperature is for fine-tuning the white balance, such as using 5500K.

The reason for this is because I have noticed a small shift in white balance, just walking dozens of metres further, etc. Also whichever direction I'm shooting against, against the light source, or sideways to it or behind it, despite using the same white balance preset. Which is why it has thrown me a bit.

Last question, sometimes I shoot in a quite dark condition at low ISO of 100, 125 etc before the winter sunrise or at the sunrise, and in the post procesing with RAW files, the shadow noise seems very excessive with lost details. Is that a normal behaviour with Canon's R6 II sensor?

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

justadude — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:07:48 GMT

"Last question, sometimes I shoot in a quite dark condition at low ISO of 100, 125 etc before the winter sunrise or at the sunrise, and in the post procesing with RAW files, the shadow noise seems very excessive with lost details. Is that a normal behaviour with Canon's R6 II sensor?"

that seems odd. I have the same camera, as well as the R8 (same exact sensor in both). For both of these cameras I can shoot at ISO 100 at times, but more often I am at ISO 1000 or 1600. In my experience the noise is very low... low to the point of being better than with any other camera I have ever owned (and that's a lot).

Can you upload an example?

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

johnrmoyer — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:14:54 GMT

@barnettgs wrote:

Last question, sometimes I shoot in a quite dark condition at low ISO of 100, 125 etc before the winter sunrise or at the sunrise, and in the post procesing with RAW files, the shadow noise seems very excessive with lost details. Is that a normal behaviour with Canon's R6 II sensor?

Some camera settings will change shadow noise. For example, the manual for my EOS R5 says:

Long bulb exposure will increase noise, but does not say whether that is thermal photon noise or visible light photon noise.
High speed shooting will increase noise if RAW instead of CRAW making me think that CRAW does some smoothing before compression. CRAW noise seems less like film grain to me than RAW noise.
High camera temperature increases noise
Auto lighting optimizer may increase noise
Highlight tone priority may increase noise
Unsharp mask with a low threshold and small radius may sharpen noise
Peripheral illumination correction may increase noise
Sometimes digital lens optimizer may make noise more prominent
diffraction correction may sharpen noise

Of those in the above list, when any of the exposure elements are auto, it seems to me that auto lighting optimizer, peripheral illumination correction, and highlight tone priority may change the exposure so that noise is increased in the raw file so I turn them off if I plan to edit the raw file. The others do not change the raw file.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

barnettgs — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 16:51:04 GMT

Default JEPG

This is a default JPG with exposure of -1 to preserve the sky details.

For some reason, this won't let me upload the RAW so I have put it in Google Drive link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIMFljwdkE181NZC8BmLSXtQ4SmELC_o/view?usp=sharing

Try to brighten up the bottom half and you will see what I mean.

Re: Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

LeeP — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:25:06 GMT

I cannot tell you how many times I forget to set white balance specifically.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

johnrmoyer — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 17:30:03 GMT

@barnettgs wrote:

This is a default JPG with exposure of -1 to preserve the sky details.

For some reason, this won't let me upload the RAW so I have put it in Google Drive link - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GIMFljwdkE181NZC8BmLSXtQ4SmELC_o/view?usp=sharing

Try to brighten up the bottom half and you will see what I mean.

I hope some of this might be helpful.

In the metadata, I noticed "[MakerNotes:Camera] PeripheralLightingSetting : On". I turned it off in DPP and this is the bottom right corner after brightening at 400% and I do not notice much noise:

This is one of the trees at 400%:

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

barnettgs — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:06:37 GMT

Thank you, I guess that is normal with Canon R6 II sensor. It is just the Lightroom CC that made the RAW files look worse.

I think I have come to the conclusion that my EVF is cooler than the rear screen. The images on my computer/mobile phone are much closer to the screen. So I have just adjusted the EVF fine-tuning colour tone to +2 to the right to match the image output, especially for when viewing the playback images.

Hopefully that should help me to evaluate the white balance better on the EVF.

Re: Clarification on White Balance Presets and K Colour Temperature

justadude — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:56:09 GMT

John came to the same conclusions that I did, but he provided you with a lot more info than I would have with the screenshots (thanks, John!). I opened it in both DPP4 and in Adobe Canon RAW. I had a bit better luck with DPP4, even though the program is slooooow.

The one thing I would add is that you are opening up a LOT of shadow area, which with this amount, really increases the look of the noise in programs like Lightroom or Camera Raw - but it shows less in DPP4. If when shooting you set your exposure to open these up more in the histogram on your camera you would have a lot less noise. I do a lot of nighttime cityscapes, and night sky photography. While my histogram is often way to the left on these shots, I try to get just a small amount of light (detail) into the shadows if possible. But, that is not always possible. However on shots like the one you shared, I would have upped the exposure a bit more after a first test shot, which would have brought a bit of detail to the dark areas before editing. Then there would be a cleaner image once you do edit.

But to give you a better idea on what to expect with noise with the R6 Mk ll, this image was a first test shot for the night, so it was before I brought my exposure up quite a bit. The reason I am posting it is so that you can see how little noise there is at ISO 3200 in the very dark areas on this camera. Sure, the noise is visible, but far less than my older Canon and Pentax cameras show. But ignore the preview Dropbox shows which for some reason looks super bright - brighter than you would ever edit a photo like this. The download should be the unedited RAW file.

Anyway, have a peek here... https://www.dropbox.com/K62A9911.CR3

Re: Do Canon white balance presents change tint?

justadude — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:08:05 GMT

"I cannot tell you how many times I forget to set white balance specifically."

For 95% of my work I shoot RAW, so Auto WB works perfectly fine. But when I have to shoot in jpeg only mode, such as for an event where the organizers expect a few thousand photos turned over next day, and only want to make small prints with them, then I need a custom WB. I often forget to set the jpeg WB until maybe 100-200 shots into the event. Whoops! Guess I'll be doing extra editing on those first shots - lol.