I think some landscape images and street scenes often don’t seem to fit with any of the established colour harmonies, and you get a splodge of colours in the middle of the vectorscope. This can be quite challenging, but in fact it’s completely natural. After all, real life doesn’t always harmonize; it can be chaotic and ever-shifting. Imagine a street scene in downtown New York or Tokyo. There would be so many colours all over the place.
But the important point that Boris talked about is identifying what your main subject is and then deciding if surrounding colours can be shifted to harmonize with it. This could be as simple as split-toning for the highlights and shadows, or it could be a single subject of a certain colour with background elements tinted to harmonize with the main subject. But sometimes the chaos of the colour might be what you want to convey, and this is just as valid an approach for your art.
Sitting back, analyzing my images and deciding what approach I want to take is definitely something I’m still working on. Sometimes the scene naturally suggests a direction, but other times you have to really think about what it is you like about the scene and what to do with it. After returning from a trip with a bunch of photos, some may be spectacular and need the full processing treatment, while other snapshots are really just for keeping as a record of that trip. In other words, not every photo needs to be a work of art!
I had a few min last night. I took a lot of photos in Ireland with my phone. The pixel phones can have a look that often works but is often too cold or has a sort of blue cast. They are JPGs but still using the blue purity slider I was able to correct this nicely without a huge impact on the overall photo. Same with some shots of grass and plants… I think this will be very useful
Nice and thanks for introducing the new Primaries RGB module.
A side note, you may want to use the Duplicate module in the darkroom for duplicating the pictures (avoiding to go back to lighttable). Also, it is a nice way to compare multiple duplicates by just clicking on one of the duplicate image in the module.
Because many continue to have difficulties with channel mixer, I decided to bring it up again with the hope that it might make it easier to understand.
In this episode I also took a couple of raw files from our play-raw category:
Thank you @s7habo for this very clear explanation of the channel mixer (with practical examples too). This really helped me and I now feel like I have a better understanding of how it works and how to apply it with my photos
Thanks for this very clear episode.
There is just one point which I didn’t fully understand, when you set the red and green channel to zero (at about 5 minutes) and add input red/green in the blue channel. Isn’t it just a multiplication of the blue values with the values of red or green in the same pixel. But if the red or green values are set to zero why do you get positive blue values in these areas, shouldn’t they remain black (multiplication by zero)? Must probably be a more complex operation?
Thanks, it’s an addition in proportion of the percentage of the input channel. Also, when you set red/green to zero, then the output is set to zero, i.e. black, but the input values are still there and those are used for calculating the new output value.
Thanks Boris, I think I finally get it. Now I need to practice this on my own photos.
The way you analyse the colors in a photo and have a clear vision of what look you want the final image to have is something I have to improve on as well. The changes you make seem very subtle but in the end it surprises me how much it improves the photo.
Thanks for all the time you spend making these videos!
Hello Boris,
thanks for your videos and your tremendous activities. I’ve learnd so much about photo editing from you. It’s always a pleasure.
But now I have a problem. in the last weeks I selected my photos I’ve taken in holydays. And now I want to edít them for a little book. But in the meantime I’ve watched your videos about color harmonies an I am excited. And now I’m hooked.
But so it takes a long more time to edit my photos. But without the color harmonies, I’m no longer satiesfied with the pictures. But what’s the solution therefor?
The solution will be to edit more and more photos and to understand to work with channel mixer and how it works.
By the way I have found an articel about adjusting color with channel mixer also based on your and Nicolas Winspeare videos. I think this can also help to understand an to achieve the desired results. The artice is in german language but nowadays it’s no problem to translate within the browser in several languages.
So, these were my thoughts in the last days. Hope you will go on to take me on the editing tour even though it’s stressfull (for me). Once again, thanks!
Thomas
I am probably stupid, but is there a text tutorial on this stuff, anywhere? I can’t always tell what Boris is doing in the videos. He says what he’s doing, clicks somewhere, and magic happens. I can’t tell what he clicked on to do that. I’m not a video learner; I’d rather have written instructions.
I can display the vectorscope, but then I do not see how he gets the complementary colors controls (the pie shapes that cross in the middle) to even open. I have read the vectorscope sections in the documentation, and they don’t even seem to mention it.
In short, I can’t get past square one in trying to use color harmonies. I will try to watch the first video again, but I would profit more from some readable instructions.
I’ve been writing some text-based tutorials here. I have plans to do more, but am limited on time. The most recent one, Changing Colors, covers some of this material with the channel mixer but nowhere near the level of depth as these video tutorials.
