Embodiments of the present invention facilitate automatically white-balancing images captured under mixed lighting conditions. More particularly, some embodiments are directed to leveraging flash photography to capture two images in quick succession, one with the flash activated and one without. By combining these two images, a per-pixel white balance kernel can be automatically determined and used to generate a white-balanced image without requiring any user input or user assumptions about the lighting in the scene. In embodiments, the white balance kernels for pixels that lie in the shadow or appear as specular spots are masked and can be interpolated from the white balance kernels at unmasked kernels. Motion effects between the flash and non-flash images may also be reduced.