Warming filter vs. shifting white balance

[Abitconfused]

Is there any difference between the effect of a warming filter and the effect of moving white balance adjustment to produce a warmer image?

[Manfred M]

I assume that you are referring to a software warming filter, rather than a physical one you place over your lens?

If you know the colours that makeup the software warming filter, you can certainly plug those numbers in manually and get 100% the same effect. The standard Photoshop filters are emulations of the Kodak Wratten filters.

[rpcrowe]

However, if you have a warming filter over your lens and try to use auto white balance, it can mess up your colors...

[Black Pearl]

You've jogged a memory.

Back when film cameras were king we had a large drawer full of colour correction filters in the shop and sold them on a regular basis for photographers needing to correcting artificial light to work with daylight film and a good number of the warm-up 81 series filters for everything from dull day landscapes photography to portraiture. In fact every photographer amateur or pro I knew had a few in their bags as they were thought to be essential tools.

When digital reared its head the use of 80/81 series filters fell off a cliff as you now had direct control over white balance and software based filtering. At the time I often wondered exactly the same Ed, is there any difference between putting say an 81b on the front of your lens and altering the WB of an unfiltered shot once in your raw converter.