Auto White Balance
A camera function that estimates the illuminant from the scene and sets white balance accordingly.
Measured in
K
In depth
Most algorithms assume the scene averages to neutral, so they are fooled by any frame dominated by one colour — a red brick wall, a green field, a sunset. Modern implementations use scene recognition and face detection to improve the guess, and many offer a variant that deliberately preserves warm ambience rather than neutralising it.
Examples in practice
Auto white balance neutralises a beautiful golden sunset into a flat grey unless the warmth-preserving variant is selected.