White Balance Eyedropper in Lightroom?

Victoria Bampton wrote in post #5951674
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Head for a light colour that should be neutral grey - around the 80-90 mark on that toolbar. The numbers will not be equal. All you're looking for is the fact that it's light grey - and you don't really need numbers to tell you that.

TBH, I usually turn the loupe off (in the toolbar) - it's quite distracting!

I use the numbers because when White Balancing tons and tons of pictures, your eyes start to play tricks on you. Neutral gray starts to morph into other colors. Nevermind if you're monitor is not calibrated. At least if you're monitor is not calibrated, you can still go by the numbers to ensure you're attaining the right neutral gray.

Eye'ng it just don't cut it.

nutsnbolts wrote in post #5952591
Wow talk about confusing. You're stating to shoot for 80-90 and then another is stating it doesn't matter as long as the numbers of RGB are equal...

So an RGB of 80-80-80 will be equal to 10-10-10?

Of course all 3 numbers won't be equal but shooting to have all three numbers relatively close to each other.

If R=G=B the spot you are at is already neutral. If you havwe 10,10,10 it will be a dark, neutral tone, if you have 80,80,80 it will be a light, neutral tone.
If you have for instance 74,86,88 you have a light tone with a bit much green and blue. If you click that, it becomes neutral.

Where are you getting the 10-10-10 numbers from nutsnbolts? That may save some of the confusion!

As far as the numbers go, they won't help you find a neutral until AFTER you've used the white balance tool, and are looking to confirm that it is NOW neutral.

Imagine you've got a shot of a neutral white card shot in weird lighting. However far you float over the grey card, you won't find equal numbers (whether 80-80-80 or 10-10-10 or anything else), because it's not neutral yet. Once you click on a neutral part of the image (the white card in this case) and the white balance is adjusted, THEN it will show equal numbers. You have to know, without looking at numbers, what you think should be neutral, and then you can double-check by-the-numbers once you've corrected.

Make more sense?

As a side note for WB in Lightroom... if you have the preview image up in the upper left corner and you hover the WB dropper tool over different areas in the working image the preview will show you what the image will look like if you click where the cursor is before you click. This is a quick way of seeing what it will look like before you click.