White balance works using the concept of colour temperature. Simply put, it is used to achieve accurate colour reproduction, or to remove unnatural looking colour casts from your photographs. For instance, in bright daylight, you would use the “Sunlight” white balance to instruct the camera to reproduce colours as they will be seen by the human eye. Using the same white balance for shots taken indoors with say fluorescent lighting would produce an unnatural yellow tint.
Most of the time, the “Auto” white balance takes care of most situations, but in tricky lighting such as mixed lighting, cameras can sometimes be tricked into reproducing incorrect colours. One way to overcome tricky situations is to shoot in RAW format (Click here to read more about the benefits and drawbacks of shooting in RAW), which allows you to tweak the white balance in post processing without compromising image quality, so you do not have to bother yourself with setting the correct white balance before every shoot. Another way to achieve accurate colour reproduction is to use a “Manual” white balance.
One tip to taking sunsets is to use the “Shade” white balance. When the sun is low, the light is much warmer (looks orange) than when it is high up in the sky. However, the human eye is able to adjust the colours that we see such that they do not look very different from other times of the day. In other words, adjusting the white balance is not “manipulating” the original colours of the scene, but in actual fact, the colours at sunset are actually much warmer than how we perceive them. With the “correct” white balance selected, the camera is able to compensate for this to reproduce these colours more accurately.
Try the “Shade” white balance setting when you next photograph the sunset and you will be surprised at how much better your photo looks!
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[...] White balance, sharpness, contrast, colour saturation etc can be adjusted and can be reverted back to their original settings without compromising image quality. Any changes made to JPG are permanent. [...]