Auto White Balance and Fall Foliage Photography
As we come to an end of Fall Foliage Photography season I noticed something interesting regarding Auto White Balance in Lightroom. I took a lot of photos of the Fall Foliage this year in Vermont, Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC. During post-processing, I kept noticing that my photos did not look right in Lightroom when the White Balance was set to Auto (AWB). Normally, AWB does a pretty good job.
The colors of the leaves in AWB just did not look right. I also noticed that I kept changing the White Balance to: As-Shot, Daylight or Cloudy and the best White Balance is within a 5,000 to 5,500 Kelvin range. By putting the White Balance into this range the colors look more true.
In the first image below—the WB is set to Auto at 4,450K. As you can see the colors are very dull and do not look like it looked when I was there.
AWB is 4,450K
In the second photo below the WB is adjusted to Daylight or 5,500 Kelvin and the difference is dramatic. The colors of leaves pop!!
WB is set 5,500K
So I would recommend adjusting your White Balance and not relying on Auto White Balance for Fall Foliage Photography. Give it a try!!