Color Temperature Meter Kelvin

Color Temperature Meter uses your phone's camera to measure the colour temperature of light in Kelvin, and tells you the mired value, tint, light type and the white balance to set on your camera.

HOW IT WORKS
The app fixes the camera's white balance, using its daylight setting where the phone supports it, so the camera cannot cancel out the colour cast it is measuring. It then reads the colour at the centre of the frame. Point it at a plain white or grey surface lit by the light you want to measure, not at the lamp itself. If a phone's camera will not hold its white balance steady, the app says so instead of showing a number it cannot stand behind. For better accuracy, calibrate once on white paper in daylight.

ON SCREEN
• Kelvin with a ± range and a settling indicator
• Mired, for filter and gel calculations
• Light type: golden hour, tungsten, fluorescent, LED, daylight, cloudy, shade
• Green or magenta tint and Duv
• A 1,000 K to 15,000 K spectrum bar
• The closest camera white-balance preset (tungsten, fluorescent, flash, daylight, cloudy, shade)

RESULT CARD
Freeze holds the reading and shows a card with Kelvin, mired, light type and the matching preset. Save Reading and Measure Again sit right under it.

HISTORY
Saved readings keep their date and time. The newest 50 are kept; delete single readings or export them all as CSV.

WHITE BALANCE FOR PHOTO AND VIDEO
Choose a target of 3200 K, 4300 K, 5500 K or 6500 K to see the mired shift, the Kelvin value for your camera's custom white balance, and the CTO or CTB gel that bridges the difference, starting at 1/8.

REFERENCE
A chart of 13 everyday light sources from candle flame (1,900 K) to clear blue sky (10,000 K).

LIMITS
This is a phone camera, not a spectrometer. It gives correlated colour temperature and tint, not spectrum, CRI or TLCI. Lamps with the same colour temperature but different spectra read alike, and mixed light reads as a blend. For critical colour work use a dedicated colour meter.

Camera images are analysed on the phone and are not uploaded. The app is available in 30 languages.