White balance and temperature question.

[AMOMENT]

Within my camera's shooting menu is the white balance option. It begins with Auto,obviousely, and decends as most do, to the warmest color tem option; shade. Right? Below that is a PRE- preset manual. Can someone explain when, why, and how I would want to use this option. Also, it seems as if the only way to adjust my temperature is to select a white balance category. On the top of the grid box is G and continuing clockwise is A to the right, M at the bottom, followed by B.To the right of this box is this: a-b and g-m. One side clearly produces a cooler image and visa versa. My question is why not always keep it in the center/balanced and just adjust your white balance shade? Can someone elaborate? Be kind....this is new to me. I have only been self teaching myself photography for 6 months..=) THANKS IN ADVANCE!!!

 

[MTVision]

Just sent you 2 PMs. 1 is about this.

The pre-set option is where you have a white balance card and you have the subject hold it, take a picture, then remove then card for the rest of the pictures. Then (I may be wrong about this) in post, you use the white balance tool and click on the card in the image - then Apply settings to all the pictures you took in that place.

You can fix temperature and white balance in photoshops camera raw. I leave my white balance on cloudy for the most part - someone on here recommended doing that.

Www.cambridgeincolour.com is a good place to go for digital photography tutorials. It explains white balance, metering options and a whole lot more. They aren't long so when you have a few minutes read one. Also the book Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson is an excellent book. I think LizardKing recommended it your other thread