How to »shift« white balance for a series of photos in Aperture

Viewing one of the photos you want to change, select the Adjustments tab on the left. One of the adjustments in the dropdown is White Balance (if it doesn't already show in the left side). You can pick one of the preset white balance values to get one that is warmer. You could also enter a value yourself in the white balance fields. One last way is to use the eye dropper and click on a part of the photo that should be white or neutral grey, and it will apply balance values to make that spot a neutral white/grey.

After you get that photo white balanced the way you want, under the Photo menu pick "Lift Adjustments". The dialog that pops up will show all adjustments made to that photo. If you want to only apply white balance, then delete all the other entries in the dialog except for the white balance one. Select all the photos you want to change the white balance, and then click the "Stamp" button on the dialog to apply to all the selected photos.

OreoCookie said:

Sorry, I should have been more specific.
Lift adjustments is exactly what I'm not thinking of, I know about lifting adjustments. This is how I have adjusted the white balance on many of the photos.

Now I have a bunch of photos where skin tones look rather similar, but they don't all necessarily have the same (numerical values for) color temperature and hue. So I don't want to use the same color temperature and hue for all photos, but I would like to use the (different) color temperatures and hues as a baseline and now add roughly the same amount of »warmth«.

I just want to avoid changing one and then transfer these changes manually (we're talking about several hundred photos).

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tbh struggling a bit to follow you on this?

I think there is an option to control what gets lifted and stamped (i.e. you can choose to lift some setting and not others) If that helps???

Do you have Photoshop? See if this works.... in one image, add a layer with a warm colour, with the opacity set real low. Essentially a warm filter. If this changes the apparent the colour temperature in a pleasing way then you can set up an Action in photoshop to apply the same slightly warm layer to a whole folder of images. Before you flatten the images you can quickly scan them and make adjustments to the layer for specific situations. Photoshop also has a Photographic filters for warm tone, cool tone, etc. I don't use them, so I don't now how adjustable they are.... but these and an Action might work too.

TheDrift- said:

tbh struggling a bit to follow you on this?

I think there is an option to control what gets lifted and stamped (i.e. you can choose to lift some setting and not others) If that helps???

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If I'm following this, he has a number of images where the WB is (for eg) 3000, 3450, 3245, 4000, 4345, etc. He wants to increase each one by (say) 50 units. If he lifts and stamps the first image (3000 + 50 = 3050) he will change all of the images to 3050, instead of adding 50 to the existing number.

Ahh with you know, yeah as suggested the filter in PS I guess.

You could also use curves in Aperture.(e.g. increasing the red or dropping the blue,...or just playing round till your happy)if you didn't want to round trip to PS....You might be able to find a preset if you look around

Either that or if you have PS then you should have Camera raw and i think Camera Raw temperature works like you want e.g. +10 + 50 +100 etc so you could just make a preset with the desired amount of increase or decrease

Not sure if any of this helps or if you know it already, still might be worth mentioning if anyone else stumbles across this thread looking for solutions

Isn't it possible add a color adjustment in Aperture similar to what a "warming" layer in Photoshop would do?

I haven't used Aperture in ages, but this would be very easy to do in Lightroom: choose the "Split Toning" tab and select a subtle, warm tint for both highlights and shadows (or maybe even just the highlights, depending on what you want). Then copy and paste that setting alone to the other images. It's the same as applying a warming filter in Photoshop. Perhaps Aperture has some equivalent?

OreoCookie said:

...
That's a great idea. I'll try it this weekend.

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Looks like you're going to have a busy weekend, with all of these suggestions to try out. Please let us know the results!

OreoCookie said:

That'd be perfect since I'd like to avoid round tripping and continue using non-destructive editing.

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The answer is yes. Use the Color Monochrome adjustment. Set the desired color you want for the warmth tone, then adjust the intensity. Done. That looks like it would do the exact same thing as a layer in photoshop. Then you can stamp all your other images with that adjustment.

Woo hoo! I'm glad it did what you wanted. It is also helping me learn more about using Aperture. There's so much more out there for Lightroom because it's more popular. I'm sticking with Aperture for now, though, and it seems to do everything I want. As I learn Aperture I'm using Photoshop Elements less and less. Only when I need to do something really specific will I bring up PSE.

Keleko said:

Woo hoo! I'm glad it did what you wanted. ...

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I'll second that! OreoCookie, thanks for trying out the different techniques, and reporting back. I learned something new today, and I think this thread will become a good reference for future readers as well.