Supplementary, here’s a related quote by Bruce Fraser:
http://www.macworld.com/2005/03/secrets/marcreate/index.php>> The Temperature slider indicates, in kelvins, the color of the light for which Camera Raw is trying to compensate. Moving the slider toward higher color temperatures (bluer light) results in a warmer, yellower image, while moving toward lower color temperatures (yellower light) results in a colder, bluer image. You can think of the Temperature slider as a blue-to-yellow control.
The Tint slider controls the axis that runs perpendicular to color temperature, so it’s essentially a green-magenta control—negative values add green, positive ones add magenta. <<
Color Temperature, Tint and Exposure can be seen as differently associated Levels’-highlights slider for R/G/B input and output. They represent three degrees of freedom which are separated / composed of linear scaling per channel (aR/bG/cB; wherein CT and Tint control the ratio of multipliers a:b:c, thus changing colors in terms of R:G:B, whereas Exposure scales linear with a=b=c). It’s finally a kind of maintenance of dimensions. Further, these settings are applied on the native date before they get distorted by any tone curve. It’s properly implemented with ACR as far as I can tell.
Peter
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