Colorful Wednesday!

As a graphic designer, I use photoshop a lot.  Even though I even consider myself an expert in PS, I am always amazed at how much I don't know. So Wednesday's are for playing with color in photoshop, although I may change that to playing in photoshop.  Some of the effects are amazing.  

I took my inspiration photo.....
and applied 9 different color adjustments to the photo colors and channels....for those not familiar with color theory and color process, here's a quick lesson:

There are 2 basic color  models -- CMYK and RGB.  

RGB is what we see on the monitor & tv screen, basically light and photos (which are created from light exposure).  It is an additive color model.  The 3 colors, Red, Green & Blue are combined together in various way to create a color spectrum.  If you have all 3 colors of light on top of each other, they make white, and if you don't have any color/light, you have black.

Inversely, the CMYK color model is used in color printing.  It is a subtractive model.  The colors -- 4 in this model: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black -- when all mixed together, make black, and as you subtract color from it, you can get a broad spectrum of colors.

So why did you need to know this?  So that when I talk about channels, and colors you will understand that I am  adjusting the red layer, the blue layer and the green layer (how much light gets through).  Hopefully this helps and I didn't just totally confuse you.   

The Finished photos:

Adjustment Used: Hue/Saturation.
Had to use the full saturation to get the red into the fungus.
I think it's stunning!

Adjustment Used: Selective Colors
Interesting that when I played with this function,
most of the adjustments only affected
the background and the branch, not the fungus itself.

Adjustment Used: Posterize
I love how this limits your color palette and makes big color blocks.

Adjustment Used: Threshold
This is similar to posterize, but black and white.

Adjustment Used: Invert (Negative)
I love the new colors.  This filter definitely makes
the background less distracting.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
To see the effects of the channel mixer, I  only changed
one channel at a time, this time it was red.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
Green.  I love the bright colors and the contrast here.

Adjustment Used: Channel Mixer
Blue.  Purple and Green.  I love these colors together.
Unfortunately they only work in a photo.
Clothes, room colors or furniture would be just too much.

Adjustment Used: Photo Filter, Cooling
This applied an orange-ish filter over the photo.
I love how it added depth to the color of the fungus!

Which one do you like best?  How about giving it a try and sharing it with us?  If you don't have Photoshop, there are plenty of other photo-editing programs that can do some if not all the same effects.
You can join the flickr group and post your photo there..