White balance and lighthouses

Hi Simon, nice image and for me it's 1 or 3 for sure.

The slight blue hue of the lighthouse in 1 doesnt bother me but I know it does to some viewers. However in the selective colouring of 3 I also find you made the lighthouse a bit too light and therefore I still prefer 1 by a very small margin, but maybe if you made the lighthouse slightly darker 3 could be my winner.

Number 2 is definitely the inferior of the three. The other two are a push. I believe your over thinking this a tad

I'd go for #1, but I'd push the white balance just a little toward #2. The blue is a bit too strong, but I would expect to see blue in the shadows.

#2 looks to me like there's a big fire in the region, or maybe lots of dust and humidity from a big storm.

#3 looks subtly odd. I probably wouldn't've noticed though. I think #1 benefits from the contrast with the sky.

I prefer #1, for the reasons others given. But I think you have raised an important point, which (in my view) is that what we think we see, what we actually see, and what we know are often three different things.

If you look at the way the eye operates (simplified, it basically 'AC-couples' each of the three colour sensors individually) it does make a pretty good job of colour management in different lighting - it lets us perceive objects in roughly their correct subjective colours despite the lighting balance (colour temperature) being seriously skewed from normal daylight (a blue sweater still looks blue at sunset even though a true white-balanced photo would show it purple). But it isn't perfect, and the colour of white at dawn and dusk is one of those things where we superimpose our belief on top of what we actually see.

I'm told that the camera's auto-WB looks for the brightest thing in the picture and assumes it is white, and that if the brightest thing in your picture isn't white it can screw up. I certainly find auto-WB useless at dusk and dawn because it ruins the colours, but even with manual WB we have essentially the same problem. So, I think you should try to ignore the fact that you 'know' something should be white, and accept that in the light you observe, it is not white at all, because it is not being illuminated by white light.

So what if you know that it would be white if it was in white light? You took the picture at that time because the light was *not* white, so why should you be either surprised or upset that the lighthouse isn't white in your image?

FWIW I sometimes deliberately exaggerate sunsets by choice of WB and other settings, but I don't feel guilty about it.

#3 for me. As I have no idea what the sunset looked like (or the RAW you took from it) I cannot say how well you managed colours. As #1 shows blue in the sky it is clear to me that #2 is overly warm. I like how the lighthouse in #3 is brought out. You put it in the image for a reason, so you might as well let it play its role.

For me the 'best approach for colouration PP' is through NIK Vivenza. It avoids the overcooked appearance that you can easily get with WB adjustments.

BTW please level your horizon.

Ok, I might have missed if someone already suggested this
Why not:
1. Blend to versions of the shot into one in PS? #1 for sky and #2 for the lamp in the lighthouse.
2. Selective WB in LR, paint the Lamp to the WB you prefer.

What WB have you set in #1? Daylight?

Finally got round to sharing the whole set, including image 1 above (albeit now straightened as per a few comments ). Thanks again for the input, find gallery here