Color Temperature Calculator

What is color temperature?

Color temperature describes the color of light emitted by a theoretical blackbody radiator at a given temperature, measured in Kelvin (K). Lower values (1800–3500K) are warm and orange; higher values (6000K+) are cool and blue. Despite the naming, "warm" light has a lower Kelvin value and "cool" light has a higher one — which is the reverse of what most people expect.

How color temperature affects your grade

White balance is the starting point for any color grade. When your camera records footage in mixed lighting — part tungsten, part daylight — the auto white balance often settles on a compromise that satisfies neither. Setting white balance manually, or correcting it in post before grading, means your creative grade starts from a neutral base rather than fighting the color cast.

In RAW files, white balance is just metadata. Changing it in post is mathematically lossless. In JPEGs, it's already baked in, so you're working with degraded data. This is one of the core reasons to shoot RAW.

Common Kelvin values for photographers