Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now, and perhaps without even knowing it, you will live along some distant day into the answers. - Rainer Maria Rilke

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

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.. 

3 comments:

klhood said...

My favorite is the channel mixer green.

www.klhood.com

D said...

Oh wow! Oh wow! That is so cool and a great example of how to use those filters! I don't have a favorite! I like them all, well except for one. Can you guess which one I don't like??

JoLene said...

I like the inverted one --- reminds me of Christmas :-D