I've always loved photography with color. Three years ago, when I was just studying the instructions for my first "DSLR", I just started to be interested in the works of famous photographers, first of all, it was the color that attracted me in the photo.
Color matching in my photographs is very important to me. I can choose a harmonious combination of colors when processing a photo for a very long time.
In this article, I would like to talk about color selection at the stage of preparation for a photo shoot.
As a rule, before shooting, I already imagine the result that I would like to get. Pictures of my photographs are always in my subconscious. Understanding what result you want to get is the key to successful shooting.
It is advisable to learn the theory of the color wheel, especially if you are just getting started with color. From the very beginning of my photographic career, I did the selection of colors in a photo intuitively, but perhaps if I knew the theory well, my first photo sessions would not be so terrible.
In my photographs, I try to play on the contrast of colors.
The main types of contrasts:
Depending on what exactly inspired me, I choose colors and their combinations in the photo:
1. Model and its color type
2. Animals or accessories and their color
3. Clothes
4. Location
Very often, girls with an unusual appearance inspire me for this or that photo shoot idea. In this case, the shooting is built in such a way as to emphasize this appearance, and when choosing clothes and location, I start from the color type of the model.
All photographers want to be a little stylist.
You need to know that girls have four main color types: summer, winter, spring and autumn.
The model in this photo is a vivid example of the "autumn" color type.
The eyes of these girls are green, amber or brown, their skin is light with freckles, and their hair is copper and red. A very warm type of appearance.
I wanted to pick some unusual color for the clothes that would beautifully contrast with her copper hair, so I asked the model to find an azure sweater (a color that is the antagonist of orange shades along the color wheel). This contrast is called complementary.
Animals or accessories
The inspiration for this photo is a chicken, its bright plumage. The main colors of this animal are red and yellow. In addition, the shooting was carried out in winter, and this, as a rule, is a cold blue background, so I deliberately tried to select red and yellow colors in my clothes (jewelry, scarf) and then simply increased the contrast of three colors: blue, red and yellow. On the color wheel, this contrast is called the main one.
Likewise, in the flower photo, large paper flowers in fuchsia shade served as the idea for the shoot. Filmed in the summer in a field, so the background was divided into two parts: blue sky and green grass.
I wanted to leave the model's clothes neutral (a simple white dress) so as not to overload the picture with additional colors. I also played on the contrast of opposite colors (though I made the contrast rather soft). This contrast is called secondary.
Model clothes
Sometimes on the set I am inspired by the clothes: its color, style.
Often, designers ask to shoot a collection or a model takes off a photo of an unusual dress. Best of all, when the clothes are of a solid color or with a small print.
In this case, I liked the blue color of the dress, and immediately there was an association with Snow White. The model just matched this style, her color type is "winter" (dark hair, white skin). For a variety of colors in the photo, I added red: lips, apples and red cloth. The result is a strong contrast of only two colors: blue and red. There was still green grass in the picture, but this color did not fit into the general gamut, and when processing the photo I tidied it up in neutral gray. This contrast can be conditionally called the main one, taking into account the yellow skin tone of the model.
Sometimes the location itself inspires me. I find a beautiful landscape or an unusual interior, and the whole shooting is thought out for this place.
In this photo, I have been playing with a violet-green color scheme, inspired by the lilac color in a nearby park in preparation for the photo shoot. The dress was matched to the flowers. It is a game with a similar contrast, these colors are located in the same segment of the color wheel.
Here in the photo there is a nice interior in the Ukrainian style, so a girl with a bright appearance of the "winter" type acts as a model. Ethnic clothing in bright colors was also selected. I deliberately operated with the contrast of yellow and red.
It is necessary to think over your shooting before their implementation and think (think exactly!) About the colors that will be present in your photo.
I repeat once again: a competent selection of four components - model, clothing, accessories and location - is the key to good shooting.
So you asked for it. Here's how I get rid of the background. And about how bright "volumetric" photos are obtained (who else talked about "luminous" colors: it's all about the same thing).
In general, we need to make a candy from an ordinary picture.
Given: image.
Task: to make it beautiful and bright. No problem.
1. Load the pictures into a raw-converter and choose the one you like.
2. Modifications are small: I move a little Exposure and Fill light(the image gets lighter) and Clarity, Vibrance and curves (the image gets brighter and richer):
3. Now load the picture into Photoshop.
4. First of all, we get rid of minor skin imperfections using tools Healing brush and Clone stamp.
5. Like this:
6. Now we get rid of the background. This is done easily. In the menu, select Select - Color Range and click on the background with an eyedropper. It turns out the following mask:
7. But we need the background to disappear entirely. Therefore, we take an eyedropper with a plus sign and draw it over the entire background (depicted with an arrow):
8. Click OK... The selection turned out. Now select from the menu Layer - New Fill Layer - Solid Color and choose white. The selection automatically became the mask of this layer:
9. But since the tones of the skin and background were similar in places, white holes appeared on the body (and T-shirt). Everything is easily eliminated: select the standard black brush and paint in the mask all the white areas.
10. It turns out like this:
11. Merge both layers into a new layer ( Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E). We liquidate I changed the point that I didn't like:
12. Of the obvious jambs, the back hand is still too dark and the near hand is too light. Create two adjustment layers with curves (or with levels), add masks to the layers and quickly shade those places that we want to fix.
13. Now we proceed to create this very volumetricity, which was asked about. Merge again all the layers to a new one, copy it and put the top one in blending mode. Screen(meaning Fill we put at our discretion).
14. Add a mask to the top layer, invert ( Ctrl + I) and with a white brush (pay attention to the opacity!) select the places that should be lighter. It looks something like this:
15. Blurring it in Gaussian.
18. Now slightly increase the contrast with a new Curves Adjustment Layer and do the usual sharpening operation ( Filter - Other - High Pass with a small value).
19. As a result, we get a picture.
Here are a couple more examples, handled in exactly the same way:
By the way, it is not always possible to get rid of the background in this way. It often happens that the background is complex (many colors, sometimes they also coincide with the color of the object that needs to be selected). In this case, we simply circle the object with paths. Some machines from the factory are usually processed like this:
Who else is interested to know?
UPD I screwed up! You can glue all layers to a new one by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Alt + E!
Hello dear amateur photographers!
It's no secret that good photography depends much more on the skill of the photographer than on his equipment. A fancy camera does not guarantee beautiful pictures yet. The secret to successful shots lies in understanding the technical features of photography, and in how they interact with each other.
Today we will talk about an important component - about color.
Color affects our perception. It can be a tool for composition, balance and contrast. Subconsciously, we respond to color faster than shape or volume. Colors can "deafen" and "strike" like sounds, or they can convey harmony in a laconic but meaningful scale.
Colors also have the power to evoke different reactions in the viewer because we associate our moods and emotions with different colors.
Psychologically, colors can be divided into strong and weak, soothing and exciting, heavy and light, warm and cold.
Colors appear denser on a white background, and brighter on black.
Each person has his own subjective attitude to color. However, there are common, characteristic points of color perception by most people. For example, red is recognized as the most active and heaviest color, followed by orange, blue, green and finally white. If you take the same squares of different colors, then the smallest will seem red, blue - the largest, and white - the largest.
An interesting fact related to this psychological illusion of color. As you know, the Russian and French national flags have three color stripes of the same width: blue, white and red. So, on ships, the ratio of these bands changes in the ratio 33:30:37. This is done so that at a distance all three stripes would seem equal.
Color circle
There is more than one model describing the ratio of colors, but the so-called color wheel is most often used in photography. It consists of several sectors of different colors. There are three primary colors in the circle: red, yellow and blue. Orange, green and purple are called intermediate, they can be obtained by mixing the main ones.
The color wheel is fundamental to understanding how colors interact. And there are two simple principles at work:
- Adjacent colors in the circle form calm harmonious combinations.
- Opposite colors create a contrasting combination.
Moreover, each of the opposed colors seems brighter and more saturated.
There are several basic rules for working with color:
Choosing the direction of light
The shape and color of objects change depending on the nature of the lighting. By changing the direction and nature of the lighting, you can balance the colors.
Changing the shooting angle
By changing the position of the camera, you can greatly change the angle of illumination of the object and thereby greatly affect its color and shape.
The angle of view, in contrast to the angle of shooting, determines the position of the object, which can be fixed by the camera lens. It depends not only on the position of the camera, but also on the point from which the photographer looks at the subject. The concept of "bottom" and "top" view is directly related to the bottom or top points of the survey, i.e. unusual shooting angle.
The dominant (dominant) color should be associated with the main subject, and if the main color is not central in the composition, it is important that it supports and emphasizes the main subject. It is best when several colors are linked together in an image.
Accent color
The strength of the color depends to a large extent not only on the quantity, but also on the location. One yar A spot of color against a calm background can make for a spectacular photo. A weak accent color can be enhanced if it borders on a contrasting color.
The contrast of color photography is expressed in the saturation and variety of tones (colors). Harsh contrasting colors (provided they are in balance) lend a photo its effectiveness and strength. Contrast is enhanced when red is combined with cyan, green with magenta, and blue with yellow.
The nature of this phenomenon lies in the physiology of our vision. The human eye cannot simultaneously bring into focus rays with different wavelengths (the focal length for red-yellow rays is greater than for blue-green ones). Therefore, when we see the colors all at once, the eye muscles begin to "twitch", trying to adjust the waves. This psychological disharmony creates a sense of contrast.
Basic combinations (colors on opposite sides of the color wheel):
Blue - orange
Red Green
Purple - yellow
Additional (colors, the combination of which gives the color that is on the circle between them):
Red Yellow
Blue red
Yellow - blue
Color harmony
Color circle
Most of us, until a certain moment, do not think about the color scheme of the photo. Meanwhile, color has the strongest effect on the viewer and greatly affects the perception of the photograph as a whole. Let's figure out what rules we must know and apply in order for our pictures to be perceived harmoniously.
From school we all know a saying that helps to remember 7 colors from the color spectrum: "Every Hunter Wants to Know Where the Pheasant Sits." Those. we all remember that a light beam through a prism is refracted into 7 spectral colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue and violet. In the artistic environment, these colors are represented as a chromatic (i.e., color) color wheel. So, let's take a look at this very color wheel and what it is eaten with.
All colors are generated from a total of 3x basic colors- red, blue and yellow.
If these colors are mixed equally among themselves, you get orange, green and purple. These colors are called constituent... This gives us a six-part color wheel.
And if the primary and composite colors are mixed equally, then we get tertiary colors. 
When all these colors are put together, we get a 12-part color circle, which today is the basis of the whole theory of color.
This color wheel can already be used to find harmonious color combinations. But still, in this circle, all colors are pure - bright and saturated. For photographs, it is undesirable to use them in their pure form, but it is better to dilute them, i.e. add achromatic colors to them - black and white. Thus, you can get a huge variety of shades and tones within one color. If we add white to the color, then its saturation is reduced to pastel tones. Conversely, adding black will increase the saturation of the base color.
In other words, this dilution of chromatic colors with achromatic colors is called "color stretching", which gives us just such a color wheel based on the same 12 colors, but with many tones and shades.
Harmonious color combinations
What follows from all this and why do we need to know all this? But just in order to skillfully use harmonious combinations of colors in our photographs, making them interesting and more attractive to the viewer. So the main harmonious color schemes the following.
Approximate examples are shown next to the diagrams (not necessarily in the exact same color, but in the same color scheme).
Monochrome (monochrome) combination
A combination of tones and shades of the same color within one sector on the color wheel. That is, one color differs only in brightness and saturation. It is quite difficult to achieve such a combination in photographs (especially on the street), because rarely do we have a gamut within the same color in nature. But if you wish, you can come to such a scheme by color correction, it is easy to do this in studio photography.
Similar color combination- a combination of three neighboring colors in the color wheel (in the photo example - yellow, orange-yellow and orange).
Complementary (complementary) scheme- two opposite colors on the color wheel (red and green in the photo).
Broken addition (or split complementary scheme)- a combination of colors, when in opposite two colors, instead of one color, two neighboring ones are taken (in the photo example, yellow, orange, blue).
Triad- a color combination of three colors equidistant on the color wheel (i.e. an equilateral triangle inscribed in the circle). The most interesting and beloved by many scheme. Ideally, one color acts as the main one in the composition, sets the mood, the second plays up and supports the first color, and the third sets accents.
There are other combinations that include four or more colors (rectangle, square - tetrad, pentagon). However, it is better not to use such a variety of colors for photography. Well, this is allowed for very experienced artists (photographers, designers) and a person who is not very experienced in color, it is very easy to get confused and do nonsense.
Color theory and application by the photographer in practice
What follows from all this color theory and how can all this be applied in practice to the photographer?
For starters, do not be lazy to think over the color scheme of your photos before you start shooting. If this is a creative photography, then at the stage of thinking over the image, immediately imagine the location and try to choose clothes that are in harmony with the color scheme. Commercial photography is no exception. Knowing the interiors of the studio or the location of filming in the open air, negotiate with the client the color scheme of the clothes, so that in the end your photos will look beautiful and tasteful.
When processing - analyze the resulting colors in the photo. What color is dominant, what colors accentuate, what colors are superfluous and they need to be completely removed from the frame (desaturate, i.e. remove saturation, change the shade, or completely recolor in a different color). Feel free to actively use the color grading and toning tools in Photoshop - color balance, selective color correction, curves, gradient map.
To analyze colors and select harmonious combinations, Photoshop has a very handy tool - Cooler. It was available online on the Adobe website, and in Photoshop CS6 it is built into the editor itself (Window-Extension-Cooler). The cooler is a color wheel that you can twist as you like, choosing color schemes and getting a palette of harmonious colors. It is very convenient to analyze a photo and immediately rotate the color wheel parameters side by side, changing the shades, brightness and saturation of colors. From the resulting palette, you can copy the color number directly into the Photoshop palette, using this for color correction, for example, the Gradient Map tools or "painting" with a brush in the "Soft Light" mode.
There is also another wonderful link - the same cooler online for everyone who works with color.
Who is interested in learning more about how to work with color correction and toning of photos in practice, welcome to our photo school for our course or.
The article uses photographs for an example of a photographer from our team.
The photographer's task is to make the photograph harmonious. Using color theory is one way to achieve this. Color has a number of useful functions:
- affects the perception of photography as a whole;
- gives the photo a special charm;
- creates the mood of the picture;
- allows you to create balance, harmony or contrast in the image;
- highlights the desired object.
Types and combinations of colors
The color wheel is the main tool of any professional photographer, artist, designer.
There are 12 primary and mixed colors on the diagram - this is the base. By adding black or white to the presented color models, you can get many different shades.
Also, the color wheel is traditionally divided into two halves: warm and cold.
Contrasting colors
Contrasting, or complementary, colors are located opposite each other on the spectral wheel. Each color can be opposed not only with one contrasting color, but also with a pair. This is the so-called broken contrast.
Opposite shades complement each other: when combined, each of them becomes brighter and more saturated.
Contrast makes the image more dynamic, allows you to elicit interesting emotional reactions: for example, red will evoke passion, and blue will instantly calm.
There are several ways to use contrast in photography:
- look for opposite colors around, try to capture good angles with them;
- use contrasts when creating compositions for staged photography;
- Apply contrast in portraits: Choose a contrasting color for your clothing and background.
A contrast of warm and cold tones is also possible. So, "warm" objects look favorably against a "cold" background. But with the opposite combination, you should be very careful.
Similar combinations
Similar combinations are created using 2-3 tones located on the spectral wheel next to each other. Neighboring tones bring harmony and tranquility to photography.
With this method, you should not choose saturated, bright colors. It is worth giving preference to pastel, light shades.
The advantage of the method is the ability to combine a huge number of different tones.
Monochrome combination
This kind of photography is created by combining with all its possible shades. The method allows you to convey overflows and subtle color relationships. Such pictures always look noble.
Other combinations
One of the most popular combinations is the classic triad - colors that form an equilateral triangle in the spectral wheel. This combination always looks lively, even when using pale tones.
The choice of equidistant colors, or an analog triad, is also popular. The first color becomes the basis of the composition and conveys the mood, the second emphasizes and plays with the selected tones, and the third subtly places accents. The method is used in comfortable compositions, as it makes the image soft.
One of the favorite color combinations is the contrasting triad. In this case, not the opposite color is chosen, but its two "neighbors". These shades form an isosceles triangle in a circle. The advantage of the method is in creating soft tension and in the ability to use different proportions.
There are also complicated options - a combination of tones in the form of a rectangle, square, pentagon. This variety can only be used by experienced and professional photographers. An incorrect combination of tones will lead to the opposite effect: it will incorrectly place accents, make the photo inconspicuous or annoying.
Basic rules for working with color
When working with color, it is important to adhere to the following rules:
- Choose your background wisely: a white background makes the color thicker, and a black one brighter.
- Add accents: one striking touch can transform a photo beyond recognition. A weak tone can be enhanced with a contrasting shade.
- Choose the right direction of light: the color changes depending on the nature of the lighting;
- Vary the shooting angle: The color may vary depending on the position of the camera when shooting.
- Decide on the dominant color: More often than not, the dominant hue is associated with the main subject.
All professional photographers prefer to use the color wheel. However, mindlessly following the rules will not necessarily bring the expected results. In photography technique, not only the correct choice of color is important, but also a developed artistic taste, color flair and experience. Feel free to take pictures, gain experience! Knowing the psychology of color, you can easily create masterpieces that attract the viewer's eye.
