Getting the colours right in photos.

jasonsony735

jasonsony735

jasonsony735

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I've been doing Photography for years now and use lightroom and Photoshop a lot but I still can't fine tune my images to how I would like them, I take really nice images but I find my colours never look as good as other posters on Instagram... they seem to get this really nice sort of film look to them with nice glowing saturated green, again I always seem to struggle to get that effect.
 
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Maybe I'm being an old fart/purist but I wouldn't aspire to mimic anything on Instagram. Sounds like you are applying filters and hoping for the best. What you should learn how to do is properly colour correct first. As in, properly balance the colours that are there to bring them out and pop.

The pro thing to do is to shoot a Macbeth colour chart and use that for reference.
 
Scam said:
Maybe I'm being an old fart/purist but I wouldn't aspire to mimic anything on Instagram. Sounds like you are applying filters and hoping for the best. What you should learn how to do is properly colour correct first. As in, properly balance the colours that are there to bring them out and pop.

The pro thing to do is to shoot a Macbeth colour chart and use that for reference.
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I guess that depends if you aiming for accurate colours. an awful lot of modern photos that people get really excited about are massive exaggerations of what the human eye would have seen on the day.
 
a1ex2001 said:
I guess that depends if you aiming for accurate colours. an awful lot of modern photos that people get really excited about are massive exaggerations of what the human eye would have seen on the day.
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Well it depends a lot on what type of photography we're looking at. I'm speaking from a film grading experience where the first stage in grading is to balance the colours naturally -- as lit by the DoP. Then you can start thinking about augmenting the look, or setting an exaggerated look. I think people jump straight to setting a "look" without first balancing the shot properly.
 
A starting point, if you're not already doing this would be:
Calibrate your monitor.
Shooting all photos in AdobeRGB and RAW.
Set Lr and Ps colour spaces to either AdobeRGB 1998 or ProPhoto.
Save your JPGS in the sRGB colour space.
 
That "high end" film look is usually produced by a technique something along the lines of:

Copy original image to a new layer, convert to greyscale (completely desaturate) and adjust input levels until about 75% of the grey has been crushed into white*.
Set the new layer blend mode to soft light and adjust opacity to between ~33-66% (what looks best will depend image to image)
Slightly increase or decrease original image layer saturation to desired effect


(That is assuming you aren't talking about the images where they've dialled the "HDR" effect to 35435435435% and think it looks good).


* Can also adjust it on curves to bring in and out certain elements of the image, etc. and/or to preserve detail in some areas when increasing overall brightness but have to be careful you don't flip the balance between dark and light areas to they become inverted in an unnatural way (unless done for effect).
 
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a1ex2001 said:
yes and taking it even further as we can now do things film only dreamed of, I didn't say it was a bad thing the results some people are getting these days are truly astounding some of the less well done versions can leave you feeling a little sick though!
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Haha, just teasing a bit. :)

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Very true. What the photographer wanted to see rather than what they did see.
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That's why photography is an art, not a science.
 
I've just started out in photography. Picked up my first camera (Fuji X-E2s with 35mm f2.0) and now starting to edit some of the photos I took recently. I've found it useful to watch some youtube videos then start playing around in Lightroom to see what each of the sliders do to your photos.

For example, last week I edited a picture of a donkey which I wasn't happy with:

Eye of the donkey by Matt McCann, on Flickr

Today I've come back to try again, and got something I'm much happier with.

Eye of the donkey re-edit by Matt McCann, on Flickr

In the re-edit I played with the contrast, clarity and tone curve.

Keep in mind I've had a camera for 2 weeks and Lightroom for 1 week, complete novice :)
 
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I guess its safe to say we will all have different opinions on what looks right and wrong when it comes to a photo. I may look at a photo and think its really good and someone else will say its rubbish.... I guess thats the same with how you colour grade your work, we see a lot of wedding photos now with washed out Greens and very bright whites , some people will hate this look and other will love it, I guess its just finding something that fits with your style, I tend to get bored very quickly so i tend to change mine all the time, so i don't really have a style but I guess i should work towards that, from what I am seeing on social media , youtube and Instagram , the most popular photographers today have a style and keep it the same in all there images..... maybe thats where I've gone wrong....

A lot of my photos I edit on Instagram I change all the time and every other month i will change the colour tone for that image a little, sometimes ill go for a really vibrant photo and other times the complete opposite , very dark browns and a moody look , I see some photographers move the white balance to a more blue look or a spring look with moving it more towards the yellow side.... to me Photography is an Art but its finding my style that fits me that,s the problem here. ha
 
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Yep, just play with the sliders and see how they affect the image. Watch some youtube videos on the more advanced stuff and you'll pick it up.
 
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