Warming filters absorb blue light, and increase the amount of orange light.
Digital photographers use filters to manipulate various aspects of the light in a shot. The filter attaches to the camera's lens, and changes the quality of the light that passes through to the camera's sensor.
Some filters affect all the light that hits them, while others absorb only a small portion of light. The most common filters for digital photography include polarizers, neutral density (ND), ultraviolet (UV), warming filters and cooling filters.
Polarizing Filters
Polarizing filters can increase color saturation and contrast in outdoor photographs, and control reflections. Polarizers absorb the colorless reflected light (i.e., glare) that bounces off objects. The rest of the reflected light, which is known as true-color reflected light, passes through the polarizer to the camera's image sensor. Polarizers can also reduce glare from bright surfaces like glass and water.
Neutral Density Filters
Neutral density filters absorb more light than polarizing filters, because they absorb light evenly throughout the visible spectrum. These filters prevent color shifting, while allowing photographers to maintain a particular aperture.
Neutral density filters also maintain proper exposure under excessive lighting conditions. For example, graduated neutral density, or GND, filters allow photographers to balance the light intensity of a shaded foreground and a sunlit background.
Ultraviolet Filters
Ultraviolet filters absorb ultraviolet light, which can prevent a bluish color-cast or low-contrast haze from diminishing important details in a shot. Ultraviolet filters do not affect visible light.
Warming Filters
Warming filters absorb blue light, and increase the amount of orange light that reaches the camera's sensor. This can adjust the color-cast in a shot with too much blue light, or add an orange color-cast for creative color effects.
These filters are useful in reducing the blue light that is common outdoors in shade, snow and on overcast days. Some portrait photographers also use warming filters to enhance flesh tones by adding a golden glow to the model's skin.
Cooling Filters
Cooling filters absorb orange light, and increase the amount of blue light that reaches the camera's sensor. They reduce the orange light associated with halogen light bulbs, sunsets and many indoor light fixtures. Some photographers use cooling filters to make light blue tones deeper and richer.
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