Fix a warm or cool color cast with Temperature

Footage shot under a tungsten lamp leans orange. Footage shot in open shade or on an overcast day leans blue. Your eye adjusts to the scene, but the camera records the cast, and the cast shows when you cut to a clip filmed somewhere else. The Temperature slider in the Color tab shifts a clip warmer or cooler to correct it.

Spot the cast

Find something in the frame that should be neutral: a white wall, a sheet of paper, a gray sweater. If it looks orange or yellow, the clip is too warm. If it looks blue, the clip is too cool.

The histogram in the Color tab gives a second opinion. In a scene made mostly of neutral surfaces, a red curve that sits further right than the blue curve points to a warm clip, and a blue curve further right points to a cool one. A scene that is mostly one color, such as a red brick wall, skews the graph, so trust your eyes first.

Correct the cast

1. Select the clip on the timeline and click Color in the right panel.
2. Park the playhead on a frame that shows your neutral reference.
3. For a clip that is too warm, drag Temperature to the left. For a clip that is too cool, drag it to the right. Positive values warm the picture toward orange and negative values cool it toward blue.
4. Stop when the reference object looks neutral, then check a face if the clip has one. Skin should look healthy and natural.
5. If a faint tint remains after Temperature, nudge Hue by a few degrees. Hue rotates every color, so keep the move small.
6. If the correction dulled the colors, raise Saturation a touch.

Temperature has a range of -50 to +50. Most corrections need a fraction of it. Drag the number beside the slider, or focus it and press the arrow keys, to land on an exact value, such as -12, when you want to repeat a setting on another clip.

Let Auto take a first guess

The Auto button sets Temperature along with Exposure and Contrast. It assumes the middle tones in the frame should average out to neutral, then moves Temperature toward the value that balances red against blue. A blue cast gets warmed and an orange cast gets cooled.

That assumption fails when a scene is dominated by one color, so treat the result as a starting point. Press Auto, look at your neutral reference, and adjust Temperature by hand if needed. Auto replaces the settings already on the clip, so press it before your own adjustments.

Warm and cool on purpose

Temperature also works as a creative control. Warm values suit sunsets, kitchens and anything meant to feel close. Cool values suit early mornings, offices and anything meant to feel clinical or distant. Set the same value on every clip in a scene so the mood holds from shot to shot.

If one clip in a scene looks different from its neighbors, check Temperature first. A white balance mismatch is a frequent reason two shots of the same place refuse to match.

Compare and reset

To see the original again, click the small circular arrow beside Temperature. It resets that slider to zero without touching Exposure or Contrast. Reset all clears every slider on the clip. Each drag is one undo step.

Try it on a tinted clip

Open DepCut, pick a clip with a visible tint, and move Temperature until a white surface in the frame looks white.