Lightroom Color Temperature Question

I am diving in deep into Lightroom (at last) and have a question about color temperature. Traditionally we know color temperature to be warm to cool low kelvin to high kelvin yet in Lightroom the temperature is cool to warm low kelvin to high kelvin. Clearly I can manipulate the gauge and get the result I want but I am wondering out loud why the difference?

Thanks in advance!

Because LR or any other RAW converter adds the color needed to neutralize the color of the light. 3000K light is warm so when you dial in 3000 LR jacks up the blue to offset the red light. Light in open shade is blue so when you set 6500 the red channel is boosted.

Joe, I don't know about your reference to "warm" being low Kelvin and "cool" being high Kelvin -- do you have a reference? Not just Lightroom, but DPP shows the blue/cool effect of lower Kelvin to the yellowish/warm effect of higher Kelvin -- or are you asking about the interpretation of warm/cool?

Ah, I think Elie is hitting something -- when we set the White Balance we are actually setting in an adjustment/correction, right?

Tony 3200K is standard for tungsten light, 5000-5500K is standard for daylight and flash. Elie's response sounds right. The corrective force is opposite of the actual color temperature. I will wait for more information.

jetcode wrote in post #11665907
Tony 3200K is standard for tungsten light, 5000-5500K is standard for daylight and flash. Elie's response sounds right. The corrective force is opposite of the actual color temperature. I will wait for more information.

Yeah, I think you're right, I just haven't given it much thought.

The slider is to tell Lightroom what the colour temperature of the lighting was when the photo was taken. Lightroom then corrects the colours for display accordingly, giving the effect that you see. It's the same in all RAW processing programs.

What he says.

Got it ... thanks.