# White Balance picker



## turnstyle (Mar 7, 2012)

Hi all,

I'm a bit confused about what the White Balance picker is actually picking.

Is it an average of *all* of the pixels shown in the Loupe? Just the center with the cross-hair? A center-weighted average?

I tried to find an answer, which lead me to this thread:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/4141961

But I couldn't understand if there was a final answer. For example, somebody created a test image with a colored line on a white background -- and the colored line seemed to have little effect on the White Balance in the Loupe -- that is, until it crossed the center of the Loupe.

Thanks for any light you can shed...


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## Mark Sirota (Mar 7, 2012)

Starting with LR4, it is a simple (non-weighted) average of everything shown in the loupe. Or that's what it's supposed to be, anyway...


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## turnstyle (Mar 7, 2012)

And so the middle cross-hair doesn't really mean all that much?

The thread I linked above made it look like it's not an average -- the line example, when moved off center, totally changed the White Balance -- seemed weird.


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## tzalman (Mar 8, 2012)

In LR 3 it is always a 5x5 pixels sample area around the cross hairs no matter what is in the loupe. In the demonstration you cited the WB changed when the line was outside the 25 pixel block. This has been changed in LR 4 and the sample size is now the same as what is shown in the loupe. Actually, this was predicted two years ago for LR 3, but for some reason was never implemented until now.


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## turnstyle (Mar 8, 2012)

tzalman said:


> In LR 3 it is always a 5x5 pixels sample area around the cross hairs no matter what is in the loupe. In the demonstration you cited the WB changed when the line was outside the 25 pixel block. This has been changed in LR 4 and the sample size is now the same as what is shown in the loupe. Actually, this was predicted two years ago for LR 3, but for some reason was never implemented until now.



Thanks, though it does look like they're using LR4 in the example I linked to (I assume the beta).


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## Victoria Bampton (Mar 8, 2012)

There was a bug in the beta that wasn't working correctly.  It should be now.


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