Intermediate Photography Lesson 7 Quiz | Test Your Knowledge

The Daylight preset is set for light around 5500K. Tungsten bulbs are much warmer, around 2700 to 3200K, so with no correction for them their orange color is recorded as is, giving a strong warm cast. The Tungsten preset would add blue to compensate.

The Daylight preset is set for midday sun, around 5500K, so it records the warmer sunset light as warm, the way it looked. Auto white balance tends to treat the orange as a cast and neutralize it, and a gray card reading does the same. The Tungsten preset adds blue, so it would cool the sunset rather than warm it.

A complementary scheme pairs colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel, such as blue and orange or red and green. Each makes the other look more intense, so the pairing reads as vivid and draws the eye. Using shades of one color is a monochromatic scheme instead.

When two light sources of different color share a room, no single white balance setting neutralizes both. Shooting raw lets you set it afterward, so decide which light matters most, usually the one on faces, correct for that, and accept or locally fix the cast in the rest. Auto white balance just picks a compromise that may suit neither.

Saturation boosts every color by the same amount, so skin, which is already fairly saturated, turns orange quickly. Vibrance boosts muted colors more than strong ones and is designed to hold back skin tones. That makes the colors richer without the overcooked look.

HSL stands for hue, saturation and luminance. The panel lets you change each of those for one color range at a time, such as darkening only the blues or shifting only the greens toward yellow, without affecting the rest of the image.

A muted palette comes from lowering saturation and pulling colors toward neutral, often with a shared color grade. Saving those settings as a preset and applying it to every image keeps the series consistent. A vivid picture style does the opposite, and high ISO noise does not reliably mute color.

Blue and orange sit opposite each other on the color wheel, which makes them complementary. Side by side, each makes the other look more vivid, and the warm and cool tones create strong contrast. Analogous colors sit next to each other on the wheel and give a softer harmony.

Many fluorescent tubes give off light with a strong spike in the green part of the spectrum. The eye and brain adapt and see the light as white, but the sensor records the green as it is. A fluorescent preset, a custom white balance or moving the tint toward magenta in editing removes it.

The Tungsten preset assumes very warm light, around 3200K, and adds blue to cancel it. In daylight there is no warm cast to cancel, so the added blue remains and the image turns strongly blue. Some photographers do this on purpose for a cold or twilight look.