White Balance
0xa403Also: WhiteBalance
Whether color temperature was auto or manual.
The WhiteBalance tag records whether the camera set color temperature automatically (0) or you set it manually (1). It helps explain why colors look warm or cool.
What the stored number means
White Balance is an enumeration: the file holds a bare integer and the reader looks it up. These are the values, and the wording is the wording the viewer on this site will print.
| Value | Shown as |
|---|---|
| 0 | Auto |
| 1 | Manual |
It has only two states and neither is a colour temperature. The tag says whether the camera chose the white balance or the photographer did, not what was chosen. The actual temperature, when it is recorded at all, sits in the manufacturer's own MakerNote.
Want to see this tag in your own photo? Open the EXIF Viewer and drop an image — every tag is decoded in your browser. To take this tag back out again, remove the EXIF data losslessly.