SHOW ME THE COLOR

From: A simple guide to understanding color by Judit Ruiz Ricart How Color Impacts Photography by Spencer Cox 8 great tips for using Color in Photography by Heather Joy Milne Alterspark.com - Color Psychology and Theory COLOR THEORY The Spectrum • All the colors we see are between 400nm (red) and 700 nm (violet) on the electromagnetic spectrum. • Based on how the human eye works they are split into three different orders: primary, secondary, and tertiary. While these categories are not clear-cut, they can serve as general guidelines on how to use color in your photos. • The more pure a color is - that is, the closer it is to a primary color - the more attention it will draw to itself on the image. • Primary • You might remember from basic biology class that humans have three types of color receptor cones in their eyes, each of them sensitive to different wavelengths corresponding to blue, green, and red colors. These three colors are known as the primary RGB colors, and all other colors in the spectrum come from combining at least two of them.

• Secondary • Secondary colors are those that require the visual stimulation of two different receptor cones. For example, seeing the color yellow requires a balanced amount of red and green light.

• Tertiary • Also known as intermediate colors, tertiary colors are those resulting from the mix of a fully saturated primary color with another half-saturated primary color, and none of the third primary color. You can also get them by combining a primary color with a secondary color. • How you see a color is also greatly impacted by the colors adjacent to it, which is why many art galleries have white walls. COLOR SCHEMES

• Creating balanced color combinations (schemes) is critical to using color effectively. The three most common types of color schemes are complementary, analogous, and monochrome.

• Complementary colors • Complementary colors are those found in polar opposite sides of the color wheel. The juxtaposition of the two hues results in a bold, vivid contrast. Colors that are complementary inherently balance one another.

• Analogous colors • Analogous color schemes are those that use adjacent hues on the color wheel. They’re usually based on a primary color that serves as the connection between all of them, but in some cases the dominant hue might be a secondary color. The lack of strong contrast between colors results in images that feel balanced and calming. • Analogous color schemes are often found in nature, which makes them especially popular in the fields of nature and landscape photography. Think of the rich oranges and reds of a forest in fall, or the blue and green tones of the ocean.

• Monochrome • Monochrome color schemes refer to any composition that uses only a single hue, with variations of its tones and shades. This type of image can be really impactful, as the subject tends to dominate the shot while still feeling in sync with its surroundings. Original COLOR VARIABLES Hue

• Each color has a wide range of tones and shades, which transform a basic color wheel into the complete palette of the 10 million colors humans can see, determined by the color variables of hue, saturation, and luminance respectively. These Saturation variables are commonly referred to as HSL. Increased Yellow Saturation • Hue • Hue refers to the radial position of a color on the RGB color wheel. It determines the name given to the color, like red, yellow, blue, or purple, • Saturation • Saturation refers to the purity or intensity of a color. The lower the saturation level , the closer the color is to grayscale. Increased Yellow Luminance • Luminance • Also known as brightness or value, luminance determines how bright or dark a color is. It ranges from 0 to 100, with 0 being black.

After a few more adjustments in the Basic panel and fine tuning the color we get the final image

Processing time ~ 2 min

Same photo using “Auto” adjustments such as JPEG result WARM AND COOL COLORS

• The color wheel is split between warm and cool colors. Warm colors range from red to orange to yellow, while purple to blue to green hues are known as cool colors. This isn’t a clear-cut division as certain tones of green and purple may sometimes be considered part of the opposite temperature. • Warm colors tend to stand out, drawing our attention right away. That’s why, for example, danger and stop signs are often yellow or red. Because of this, warm colors in photography are also known as advancing colors. On the other hand, cool colors tend to fade into the background and are referred to as receding colors. • Knowing this, you can use color to give your images visual depth by combining advancing and receding colors. For example, a picture of a yellow fish with a blue water background gives off a much stronger sense of depth than the same shot would with a purple fish. THE EMOTION OF COLOR

• One of the rarest and most powerful colors in nature, red is particularly important to photographers. Its historic associations between the color red and the emotions of passion and excitement make red a very active color. A little red goes a long way. • Orange is one of the more common in nature. It’s not just sunsets. The color brown is typically just a darker shade of orange, and it appears in nature all the time. Orange comes in a wide range of tonalities, from the dark brown of trees to the bright orange of a pumpkin. It conveys a feeling of warmth, and it is not as overpowering as red. • Yellow is the brightest and most optimistic color, particularly when it appears on its own and not as a blend with orange or green. However, it is this blended yellow we see most commonly in the world. Even bright green grass and vivid orange sunsets almost always have a component of yellow. • Even though blue is the most common color in nature, thanks to water and sky, green is the one we most associate with life. Our visual systems recognize more shades of green than any other color. So, your photographs can include multiple shades green, and almost endless variations thereof. Green is a familiar and soothing color. Because it represents the living world, it creates a sense of calm; green is the warmest of the cool colors. • Blue is associated directly with distance in the real world. Haze on the horizon, as well as the blue sky itself, both signal faraway, even unreachable destinations. Blue, on top of that, is not a busy color. It is calmer and less flashy. Dark blue and light blue convey somewhat different emotions. Dark blue can be strong and foreboding, as in a dark cloud. Light blue is gentler and more optimistic. But both are peaceful; even a blue storm usually has an element of calm to it.

• Violet is perhaps the rarest color to see in its pure form in nature, usually found only in very specific sunsets or flowers. The color violet has a sense of tranquility to it – a calmness that is pleasant and often unexpected. If you ever have the chance to photograph a display of this rare color, like lupine flowers in bloom, make the most of it; violet is unusual enough that it makes your photos stand out.

SATURATION IN POST PROCESSING oversaturated

• One of the most important steps in post- processing is color correction. The tools present in software programs are nearly endless, allowing you to tweak any little detail needed to bring your images’ true colors to life. • One of the most important things about post- processing color in photography is knowing when to stop. oversaturated • Over saturated altered colors, especially in landscapes, look like they are from another planet. • Above all things, remember that bad color correction can feel off-putting. Vibrant color EXTRA SLIDES KEY TERMS FOR COLOR

Hue

• Hue is the term most people use to describe different colors, such as red, orange, purple and so on. Hue is synonymous with wavelength most of the time, except for the non-spectral colors like pink and brown. Brightness • One of the key factors in color psychology is the level of brightness in a color. You will also see brightness referred to as ‘va lue’. It represents the quality of a color from dark to light, or when it comes to pigments, how much black or white exists is in a co lor. • The three main terms used to describe brightness are shade, saturation, and tint, which are defined as follows: Shade

• The shade describes how dark a color appears, as it moves from its vivid color towards black. As a color becomes more shaded, it’s synonymous to having the lights slowly dimmed, till you can only see black. Saturation

• Saturation describes how a color transitions from its most vivid appearance towards a grey appearance. A highly saturated color is a vivid, pure hue. As we desaturate the color, it becomes less saturated and starts to appear gray and washed out. Tint

• As the vivid color moves towards white, we have tint. It’s the opposite of shade.

ADDITIVE AND SUBTRACTIVE COLOR

• There are two ways to combine colors. First, by merging colored light, and second, by merging colored pigments. Among the color models in Figure 5, the one additive model builds colors by adding light, while the two subtractive models build colors by subtracting light. • Building color by combining light is called additive because you’re adding colored lights together. As you add more and more colored lights, the overall color gets whiter and whiter. Add red and blue, and what you get is violet, but it’s a washed -out lighter violet. Add green to the mix, and now you’ve hit white because you’ve now covered all visible light waves. • Subtractive color combinations work the opposite way, by removing light. However, this concept is a bit complex and philosophical, so I’ll take you through some examples before explaining it. • When we see a green leaf, what we’re seeing is the green light that reflected off the leaf. Or you could say we’re seeing the green light that was not absorbed by the leaf. In other words, the leaf is absorbing red and blue light, so only green light bounces off of it. • Or put another way, the green leaf is subtracting red and blue from the visible light, which means there’s only green light l eft to reflect off of it. • So when we look at the tree and see all those leaves, what’s happening is those leaves are subtracting all visible light, except green. • Technically, our entire concept of color is completely wrong, epistemologically speaking. A green leaf appears green because it rejects green light. So technically, the green leaf isn’t even green. As I see it, if we call something green, but it does n’t even absorb green light, how can we justifiably call it green? So every color you ascribe to everything is technically not that co lor, but rather, rejecting it. • Let’s get back to our discussion on subtractive colors, with an example of mixing paints using the RYB color model. As you add more colored pigments, you suck up more and more light. The more colors you add, the darker your colors get. This is because each color absorbs more and more light, leaving less light to bounce off the paint. • Add the primary color red, and now you’re sucking up all the light except for red (because technically red paint is NOT red, it’s just absorbing all other wavelengths except red). Next, add blue paint, and now you’re sucking up every wavelength except red and blue. But now, it’s time to add yellow, and now we’re sucking up every color except red, blue and yellow, which means we’re now absorbing all the visible light, so our paint is now black.

CALM COLOR COMBINATIONS

• The research on aesthetically pleasing colors deals more with related colors, such as contrasting colors or similar colors. So a good starting point for establishing pleasurable color combinations is the color wheel, which is typically used for this ex act purpose. • The figure below shows color combinations based on the color wheel which you can use to guide your colors palette selection, aiming for pleasing colors, that work together, aid contrast, and generally feel comfortable on the eyes. • There are so many books, blogs, and palette generators, that there is no point in me covering how to combine colors. Instead, let’s leave it here by thinking about color palette generators as ways of producing harmonious, but not necessarily functional color combinations

STRESSED COLOR COMBINATIONS

• While some color combinations feel easy on the eyes, others feel strained. Perhaps the best-known way to strain users’ eyes with color is an effect called chromostereopsis, shown below. This is the wobbly optical illusion that people experience when they look at two colors that are far apart on the color spectrum. • Red and green appear close together on the color wheel, and according to color theory, they should be nice complementary colors. But if you look at them on the color spectrum you’ll see that they’re quite far apart. • Chromostereopsis emerges when one color reaches the eye slightly faster than the other, due to different wavelengths. This creates an optical illusion where one color appears closer than the other.