Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hi everyone. Welcome to the cause color theory for photographers. In this course, I wanted to teach you color theory in context of photography. And really help you to combine these two fields, which are not really commonly being taught by the classical color theory. And which is such a shame because color theory is so helpful for graphic designers, illustrators or painters. And we, as photographers, we're really left out when it comes to our needs and our demands when we work in our craft. So we need to think about very much different things. We need to think about highlights, shadows, Dynamic Range, Midtones, white balance. There's so many things which don't have a place really in color theory. And this is where I want to jump in and combine these two worlds so that you can actually benefit in the best possible way from color theory itself, how it's classically being taught. And then really apply that in our usual workflow we have as photographers where we added our images in Photoshop and will be then able to use that what we have learned to make our images really make look the best they can. So that means we will talk first about certain terms so we can define them and we know what we're talking about terms like hue value, saturation, chroma intensity. Whereas the difference between some of those. And we will then see how you can create contrast in your images without being reliant on Darkness or brightness, so that we actually learn the relationship in between certain colors in order to create contrast where you can start out with a completely flat looking image. And as you add your colors, your image won't be craving the contrast. And that's something which is really interesting, I think for photographers, because there we will see how important values for us and how certain values are incapable of reproducing a color hue. And that happens to images quite often. And this is something where we need to jump in and Mac OS of sensible for it because there's such a truth and reality behind the relationship of color, hue, and the value that we need to be really concerned about where the value sets. When we think about calibrating this, we will have a deeper look into. We will also check out a few different color schemes we can create, like the triadic in the complimentary color scheme, split complimentary color scheme, and analogous color scheme and see the differences. What are each of them good for? Warehouse disadvantages and advantages of either of them. So that after we've done all the theory about that, which is about 30 minutes, It's not too long. And we will then look into the, we will then go into Photoshop and do a practical part. We will apply all the theory we have learned and see how to make our images really look the best, how we choose for color scheme to create a concept for image, and how to get the most your images by using colors that contrast each others and create a world with mood and interesting looking images. If you enter that and you want to learn about color theory and how it relates to your work as a photographer. Then continue and feel free to take the course. I hope you will like it and that it will help you. Cheers.
2. Theory: Color Basics And Color Mixing: Hi everyone, welcome to color theory for photographers. And the very first thing we should be looking at when talking about colors and the color wheel are the primary colors, which are red, blue, and yellow. These colors make up all other colors you basically see. And these exact colors that cannot be made by combining other colors. They're pretty much necessary for whatever we are going to see in this world in terms of colors. One step further coming from the primary colors would be the secondary colors. And these secondary colors are result of the mixing of these three primary colors. So let's say we mix blue and yellow, which are primary colors. Then we end up with green, making it a secondary color. Mixing yellow and red will result in orange, and red and blue will result in violet. All these colors, orange, violet, and green as mixed with primary colors. That's why they're called secondary colors. From here on, we can go one step further. We can call these intermediate colors are tertiary colors. They are the mixture of a primary color and an adjacent secondary color. For instance, you mix blue, a primary with violet, a secondary color. And that would produce an in-between hue, which would be blue violet. That's why they're also called to name colors like yellow, orange, red, orange, yellow, green, blue green, which Brooklyn not be easy to translate, for instance, into clockwise. And these are the sort of in-between colors. That's why we call them tertiary colors as this precise combination of secondary color and the primary color. As we're talking now about mixing colors, we need to know that there's two fundamental ways to differentiate when we mix colors. The first way we'll talk about is the subtractive way. With this way, you, you consider the colors of the spectrum of CMYK. That means cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Black stands for K here, which K is a short form of key. And then the world of subtractive color mixing. We need to think in terms of mixing paint or pigment, for instance. So as one adds color on top of each other, the result would get darker and duller, and it would, as we add more color, tends to become black. So that also means that the more unalike the pigments being mixed, the darker the result will get. Darkness would mean less luminosity. And thus mixing pigments is a subtractive color process as the subtractive term directly correlates to the luminosity being achieved by the column mixing process. So you can probably remember when as a kid, you might have painted with watercolors. And as you were mixing the colors on top of each other, that the result would become more and more muddy and darker. This is precisely the effect. So that's why we call this the subtractive process. Once again, as we become darker by the mixing of colors. However, are photographers, this process is not too important to know off as a painter, we would have to go much deeper into this because we would be much more concerned about creating the stellar colors and what methods are out there to mix colors in order to end up with a color which is darker, maybe has even less saturation. And all these things for us as photographers, as we're more concerned with light, are not as important. That's why we need to talk about the other mixing process. And that is the additive process of mixing colors. And they're in this process we think in terms of mixing light. So if we say mix colors sources created by light, the combination will add luminosity or brightness. Hence, the light intermixing is considered an additive color process. We will end up with a brighter color. In the end, we have white instead of having black with when we mix pigment. So that's it about the mixing for now. The next chapter we will get into more important topics for us photographers. This makes just a small introduction into the basics about color and what happens when we mix certain colors. The next chapter, we'll cover the properties of color, where we will talk about hue value saturation and the effect and cause of the interplay of all these properties in color and why they are so important for us as photographers. So stick around for the next chapter.
3. Theory: Hue, Value, Saturation: So you want to talk about hue value and saturation. The first I want to talk about in here is the color hue. And color hue basically is when we refer to a color on the spectrum by its name, then we refer to its hue. So for instance, we can talk about a basic color, blue. And within blue, there will be different hues of blue. We could say sky blue, navy blue, light blue. And there's all these different hues within the world of blue. Whenever we have this distinction of certain news of blue, we talk about a hue. And the next thing we need to know about is value. And value is basically just the lightness or darkness of a color hue. So however bright or dark, this indigo blue might be, for instance, another word for this, which might be used in editing softwares are different tools, might be the word luminosity value. So a pure white piece of paper, for instance, would show maximum luminosity. While a black piece of paper would have no luminosity or at all. And talking about the value, value is very important because there's one important thing we need to realize when we think about value, that it's not just ending here with me telling you that, well, value is brightness or darkness of a color hue. We need to visualize this because it will give us an important realization. That one is that if we look at a color gradient from dark value to very bright value, basically from black to white at its extremes. Then we will realize that Hugh cannot exist without value and different levels of saturation cannot be applied without the hues. So that basically just means you will see that at the extreme of the gradient, we have no color anymore. So this, the saturation is completely gone at that point. And this is important for us if we calibrate our images, because when we photograph, for instance, outside or wherever, for that matter, we will often have areas in our image presented by the highlights, which are very bright. And if we look at the bright side of the value gradient, we will see that this has not the properties to pick up the color, right? But we are color grading our images all the time. And never do we actually think that our values need to be pulled down because we want to add color. We might think, well, it's too bright. And therefore our pull the value down. So it doesn't end up to contrast to maybe or just mix it, correct in terms of exposure. But what is really important for us is to understand that in order to prepare images, to be able to pick up the color we want to later on add in an image. You need to be very wary about our values and especially those values in the highlights and also in the shadows, but mostly actually in the highlights. That's where, that's where it's most difficult to end up with good colors, because you rarely have extremely dark shadows. But cameras tend to fight quite a bit with highlights. And even if you're not completely dead white in certain areas, it will always help you to prepare your image by pulling down some highlights. Maybe even push it a little bit of shadow, making it a little bit brighter, higher in value. And that way we will later on see that we, although it makes the image look like, we diminish contrast. Yes, we do, and it's an intermediate step, but the contrast we will later on ad with color actually. So now we need to think one step further, that contrast is not only the interplay of dark and light values, but also the interplay of the colors. And we can only achieve this when our Canvas or image is properly prepared in order to pick up the color, which we will then later on in this course grade our images with. So this is really important for me to bring this through. And we will, of course then, as we go into practical examples, talk about how we exactly achieve this and how we make ourselves sensible for these dynamics. Because I'll tell you, if Calibrate our images and we are not concerned about our values, then we will end up with quite cheap examples. Of course, we'll always be able to grade our images and give them color and contrast in colors and all of these things. But it will never look as good of a quality result compared to when the values are pulled down because this is the reality, the gradient gives us a clear representation of when do we actually represent a color hue. So next, I want to talk about the word saturation and also just briefly explained very correlated words which are intensity or chroma. They also refer to a saturation of a color. But for us, most important is the word saturation. And this is the word we will most likely find in our editing software or even just use as a general term when we think or talk about photography. And the saturation basically refers to the intensity or the purity of a color hue. So the degree of that will give us the saturation. The other words I just briefly want to talk about here we could use would be chroma, for instance, and that would be more likely to being used by painters. For instance. Chroma is basically when we have color on one end, 100% color and then 0% color. So gray on the other end, resulting in a scale between pure hue and gray. On this scale, we can see that with every step that color gets slightly less saturated. And the steps in between, we would call tone. The other closely-related word would be intensity. And that basically describes the brightness or darkness of a hue. So if we mix white with pure hue, we would end up on a scale from one end to pure white on the other end. And on the other hand, we can do the same when mixing black and pure hue. We would end up with pure hue on the one, on one end and with pure black on the other end. Each step in between what we called a different shade of that color, hue. And when we talk about mixing with white, each step would be attend a different tenant of that original color hue. That for us is not too important as we don't mix colors like painters too. It's just important for us to know that we might stumble upon these terms as well. Sometimes in some editing softwares, there might be other functions and they will use the word intensity, for instance. And then we need to know that where this comes from. So the next chapter we'll focus on color relationships. And this is where we will get into the color wheel and see what relationships certain colors share and what effects they might cause out of this will be covered in the next chapter. So stick around.
4. Theory: Color Schemes: So now finally being at the color wheel, the first distinction I want to make is talking about cool and warm colors is really the simplest step we're going to take for now, just to see graphically, where are we When we talk? Cool colors? Well, we, when we talk Juan Carlos and those warm colors on that side there, the colors of red, orange, and yellow for instance. And we perceive these colors generally as warm. On the other hand, we have the cooler spectrum of colors, which as we all know probably that the blue hues, even green can be considered cold and hues of violet. The first thing now, after differentiating between cool and warm colors would be complimentary colors, for instance, like red and green, as you can see on the color wheel, the opposite to each other. Hence, they have the biggest complimentary effect, resulting in an extreme contrast. Mixing these complimentary colors in with pigment, for instance, would result in lower saturation and value. So like we talked about in subtractive color mixing it as adult learning darkening effect. For us as photographers, the complimentary effect is much more interesting than the mixing itself. Because as photographers we want to use these, this knowledge in order to create contrast without being at least reliant on value in terms of contrast, as in pushing your contrast knob to brighten your highlights and too dark and your shadows. We don't really need that. If we work with colors that live in a world where they create contrast in relationship to each other. One step further from this would be a split complimentary color scheme. That's basically a variation of the complimentary color scheme. And the only thing it has is that in addition to the base color, it uses two colors adjacent to its complement. So if we have green as a base color, and then on the other end, we used to have read. Then we take two colors. We've have a gap in-between those two colors. And that would create a split complimentary color scheme. So that way we can start to build contrast, but we have less tension on that image for us as photographers. Using a split complimentary color scheme is an interesting way of creating the tension of complimentary colors, but with being just a bit more sensible about the relationship in between those colors. So later on we will be using this split complementary scheme to create a color scheme with which we will cut out an image. And this is really cool for us because the color scheme has three colors. And as we, as photographers, we look at our images in terms of highlights, shadows, and midtones. We will have a look and see which color to use in these areas and how they were complement and contrast each other. This will be fun, cool exercise for us to see how to create looks with a color scheme and how to prepare our image in terms of our values so that our color scheme actually finds the best possible surface for it to stick on there. That's really important for us, like I've already said. But now the next thing we wanna talk about a similar color scheme, which is called the triadic color scheme. And this color scheme basically just uses three evenly spaced colors around the color wheel. This color scheme tends to be quite vibrant, even if you would use a pale color of a relatively unsaturated you, even then it would be giving a quiet, vibrant effect to your image. So as this, as this can result in such a vibrant effect, we need to be a little bit sensible about this color scheme as we don't want to look at it just look clownish or overly saturated and crazy. And so one good way to go about using this color scheme is to let one color dominate. And then you can use to others as, as an accent. Let's say for instance, we opting for a color scheme which has orange, violet, and green. Now we could say, okay, I want to use orange for my highlights as that's a natural color to be represented in highlights. And I want to make this color dominate the image. I want to give the appearance of a very warm, nice image. Then we get this color, the biggest stage. And then we could go into the midtones. And fill in some violet, which will blend in into greenish looking shadows. So, but remember the violet and the green, we will turn down. They will not be the style of the image. We were not trying to make these as vibrant as on the color wheel. They will just slightly color our shadows and our mid-tones, whereas the highlights there can be really, really warm. Like for instance, in the golden hour, when early, really early in the morning, you have so much warm light that all the other colors they turned down. But it doesn't mean that everything has to be just warm in orange. We can still work in these shadows and just give them a slight feeling of a different color and create contrast that way. And generally more interesting image. On the other hand, we have analogous color schemes. And these color schemes where we choose three colors that are next to each other on the color wheel, they usually match really well as they're so close together on a color wheel. We also tend to find these in nature. And they are very harmonious and pleasing to the eye. But for us as photographers, they would not usually be useful to us too much in order to create images which stick out. We will work with this color scheme as well on an image and we will see what we can create. Sometimes this might be interesting if we have a scene which is relatively monochromatic. So when we talk monochromatic and we were talking about different tints, tones and shades of a single hue. But as this is even one step less interesting than the analogous color scheme, because the analogous color scheme has at least could have blue and then to cues of green. The monochromatic would have, say, only different tense tones and shades of blue, for instance. And we will see how that looks as well. So in the next one, I want to talk about some examples, really want to show you. And these examples will not even be photography because I wanted to show you how artists were thinking about colors and light when they didn't even have the tools over camera, but they still had to paint what they we're seeing. And that's why I really want to talk about why they deliberately choose certain colors to showcase billing and color in different scenarios and lighting conditions. And how important that is to look at that as a photographer, as the digital age, we'll take away so much for us in terms of thinking and makes us less sensible when it comes to these slight effects of color outside, which a lot of us tend to neglect when color grading I images. So stick around for that one and we will then have a look on these paintings.
5. Theory: White Balance In The Context Of Fine Art: So now before we have a look on these paintings by James McNeill Whistler and Claude Monet. I want to talk about color temperature. That's a really important topic for us. This is something you can directly relate to as photographers. This is actually something not generally covered by color theory resources because it's not traditionally being used by traditional artists or even graphic designers or illustrators, simply not important to them and they don't have to worry about white balance. But for us as photographers, it's very natural to work with that. Maybe some people will think less about it. Some people more. Probably most people will have an automatic white balance setting on the camera. And we'll then maybe slightly correct their raw images and that's it. But I want to have a deep look into that because this is actually a very sensitive topic we need to make ourselves sensible for. So if we talk in theoretical terms about color, temperature, if we talking a cloudless day, then we have relatively unfiltered sunlight representing the full spectrum of color frequencies from infrared, ultraviolet. It other times though, such early morning or late afternoon, particular colors are filtered out by that atmosphere. So certain conditions, makeup for certain colors to dominate our scenario. So let's say for instance, the early morning, very early morning, commonly referred to as the golden hour. Most colors, but the red and orange hues will be absorbed by the atmosphere ends, resulting in a very golden look. In other scenarios, like on very cloudy days, for instance, we will see that the world is starting to look blue. If we, for instance, Microsoft sensible, on a day which everyone will face some point, very cloudy day, look outside and see, is it just gray or is there any color actually going on there? We always call these days great days. And if we take a photograph out there without automatic white balance, it will translate into a gray image, right? But more often than not these days, actually not just gray. They have blue in there. And what happens there is that the atmosphere filters out lots of color that we would have on a cloudless day. But blue. So blue dominates in these scenarios. And what's really important for us is that we start to worrying less about neutralizing that slide hue of blue. Because look now at these images. These are images from the Nocturne serious. And he painted the thumb SEA. We will see that we have beautiful blue tones here on a cloudy day. Basically, these are when they're called Nocturne. So basically referring to the term of night. These are just when it gets stuck. And I live in London and I see these days also quite often and it's very characteristic of London. And I love how there is this whole series of paintings, not only by Whistler, but also by ammonia, for instance, where they capture the essence of the city London, with a typical weather in London, fog and the cloudiness. Just this sort of day, which we often have one after the other, after the other. Where it is just, we would say gray, I would say blue. And our camera wants to, wants to capture gray. And we might even buy a gray card to neutralize the images. But why did these painters not paint the images gray? Because certainly it's not gray outside, but a camera wants to be gray. So what are we talking about? So we're talking about actually being interesting with the colors we choose, right? Though. What I want to encourage you, and I want to have a look with you at these paintings rather than some photographer. Of course, some photographers really emphasize the fact of, of colors outside. But I want to put you into a world where there were no cameras and there was no automatic white balance. And we need to think about why did they choose this blue? Maybe it wasn't even that blue. Maybe it was a little bit less blue. But for the artist to communicate that blue, to show other people how the person felt in that blue. Being engulfed by blue. Maybe the best way to do that for them was to just emphasize the fact that something was blue. And even though we have here almost a monochromatic color scheme where we just have different shades of blue. We have here in the mixture like a slight different hue of blue, like a blue, green. And then we have some small accents, were the complimentary color of yellow. But this is not too crazy in here, right? But even though this is not crazy, the artists communicates the blue in a way at, it probably can't be achieved any better. Then. Just let the blue speak like this. So this is why I'm showing you this. We have also examples where there's less blue obviously, and the image is much more gray. But the artist didn't use black and white to find the gray tone and then painted the image. The artist actually mixed colors together. We talked about how we mix these colors, even though they're not so important for us, we need to remember how artists, that things before that an artist we're always concerned about colors. Hardware represents something with the colors I have here on my palette. And the same we need to be concerned about as photographers. To the other hand, we have Claude Monet, who also painted in London, and he created these images of the House of Parliament. This is in 1993, which are all painted in different weather conditions. Some painted during a cloudy day, summer on a sunny day. A lot of them actually happened during the fog and he was writing lots of letters about how how these days turned out and he was really struggling with that. But in the end, he painted like that. If you see some of these images, there are more soft, especially if you look at these edges and you will see how the fog interferes with what manet wanted to paint here. But what is important for us here again, to see that, okay, he's employing here a complimentary color scheme. So we have, let's say, a blue and orange. And we see the House of Parliament is so blue. Would we render the House of Parliament so blue if we would take a photograph of it when the sun is just about to set. Probably not so much, right? We probably still have some warm information of it. Will probably even try to warm up the shadow because we think it was the sun goes down right as the sunset, everything is warm then. But no, the shade actually lives in a very cold Kelvin value when there's warm sunlight out there. And we need to be sensible about that because even on a sunny day, please look at the shadow. The shadow, the shadow will be colder. And if you know that, you can make your image actually reflect that. And, but that also means that you have to sort of look away from the, what the automatic white balance will do for you and where the automatic white parents will take over and neutralize everything. And this is precisely where we add also on white balanced chart. So the shades can be even around 8 thousand kelvin. When we now go Walmart, we have a cloudy day at around 60, maybe even up to seven K, 7 thousand kelvin can be quite, quite cold. But what I'm asking us to not set your white balance right in there, but to set it just slightly off. So you can communicate to all the viewers that it was a cloudy day. It was a blue day and not just gray. And it was a hue of grey. And in that gray that was Bluemix, then we want to preserve that feeling of the color and the appearance of the color, even if it means that we overly intensify that. Of course not crazy. But what I mean by saying that is that it doesn't have to be the exact blew out there. Of course, when Monet painted some of these pictures, these were not 100% the colors he saw, but it worked for him very well too, represent how he felt in that situation. Being engulfed by those colors in this foggy, cloudy London. And therefore, there were great fun to use and to maybe even go a bit stronger than what it actually is. So be confident about just being a bit of. Next step is that we will create color schemes with three colors for highlights, shadows, midtones. And then we will precisely create these feelings, these dynamics with images, and learn what it takes for images to be prepared for then to absorb that color. Because as I told you, they don't naturally do that too well, as the values are often not in the right place to represent a color hue. That's where we're going to jump in in the next chapter, where we will then go into Photoshop and the camera editor and work with these color schemes we create. So I hope you liked that theoretical part. Now we can jump into the practical one.
6. In Practice: Triadic Color Scheme: Alright, now that we're done with the theory, we can actually jump into the practical part and apply the lessons we've learned and see what we can do with an image like this one right here. For this chapter, we're going to use a triadic color scheme, which is a very intense color scheme as we've learned. And the color scheme where we have to be quite careful and sensible about the way we apply it to our image. As the colors in that color scheme are quite far away from each other. And they're evenly spaced out on the color wheel. And that means that there's lots of tension when using this color scheme. Of course, we don't have to be 100% evenly spaced out on that color wheel. But the surfaces very well in order to have a concept when we calibrate the image. And we also will be able to know beforehand if we already have a sense of what we want to do with an image, that one color scheme might be better suited than the other. In this case, we're going to look to create something quite cinematic looking. And the triadic color scheme is very good for that purpose because you'll see that quite often in films or scenes which are graded very intensely with lots of green or blue mixtures and warm tones or all of those grading styles basically, which are fall off from the neutral color space and are really good of highlighting a mood and creating a style or that particular movie. So in this case, we are going to jump straight into this and see what we can do. So in this image, as you can see, you can already notice that there's quite long shadows and we have a situation at the late afternoon therefore. And what we also have learned that in the late afternoon, especially on a cloudless day, the atmosphere won't filter out so much of the warm light, as opposed to a cloudy day, for instance, where the blue color spectrum is much more dominant compared to a cloudless day, especially when the sun is quite low. So here we can already see that without doing anything to that image that our whites a little bit one. And we can also see though. So also one of those things we have learned that the shadow is blue and comparison or cold. This is a typical challenge the white balance will face. To balance these situations out is not always easy or possible for that matter. And what we tend to do then is usually what might be a way to solve this if you're thinking in terms of, I want to neutralize this. Well, as it looks to Bluetooth. To me, maybe you would be warming this up and you'd end up with a very warm energy. And it's still a little bit blue on my screen. And you'll be ending up somewhere here. Although here, the more into the shadows we go, you still have some sense of blue and now you're quite warm in here. But the fact that this is a warm sunset doesn't mean that we don't have a cold light spectrum also being involved in that image. So we can perfectly retain that, especially when we are going to use a triadic color scheme, where we're going to use these three colors which are quite far away from each other. So we can already build a concept upon that idea that we want to retain a warm light. We want to build a colder shadow. And then we will see where our mid-tones fall in regards to the color scheme we are using. And see how that looks. We obviously always free to slightly adjust and go out of that realm of being 100% within the triadic color scheme. So we have the best possibilities in using that as a reference and using that to create a better looking image without being trapped too much within that triadic color scheme. But we will be quite close still, especially for the representation purpose of this lesson. So in here, I would like to go back again because I don't want to use the temperature just yet too much. And I still want to retain that blue in here. We've got. But something I'd like to use now is to already involve some of that green. Because if we are now using warm, so orange and blue, we will be ending up somewhere in a green hue or that third color. That means that if we would be now having too much magenta, this point, we would be fighting the magenta later on if we go into the color grading tool. And that wouldn't make too much sense at this point. So if you're already know that you have one of the other color in your color scheme. Well into the tent and make sure that you don't have the opposite color of it because these colors are capable of neutralizing each other. So I'll just drive up the green a little bit. And I like how that looks this point and we can always readjust that. But that's pretty much where I would be starting at. Now in the chapter about you saturation and value, we have learned looking at a color gradient that a color hue can only exist when the value of the color is in a range where it's neither too bright or too dark. Because as we go too bright or too dark, we basically lose the saturation and the hue at the same time. So this is that one important lesson we need to consider now as we are going to apply the colors, because reducing the value now in this range of highlights will give us the opportunity to prepare that image, to pick up the color we are opting for in a much better way as we have seen on the gradient before. So in order to do that, There's a few different ways and each of them will have a slightly different look. And it's a preferential thing. You have to decide where you feel the most happy with, where you feel your image. Who looks the best by pulling down your highlight in one way or the other. And I want to just quickly go with you through these ways and see how they really affect your highlights. So obviously, the first way would be to use the exposure. But the problem of the exposure is that we're basically pulling down the whole value range of the image. And that's not something we want to do at this point because we want to be a bit more targeted within the highlights as this is a crucial area and a more difficult area or your image to be picking up your color, as we've seen on the gradient. So this is not really what we would be doing here. This is just much more of a tool to be used when you are correcting for exposure. In this case, we might be actually just pushing just a little bit or use the arrow keys here. And that would be an, a better range to continue with. Now, another way is of course also the contrast. But the problem with contrast is that it does two things at the same time. And the common way of using your contrast would be doing the complete opposite of what we are looking for. So basically, using a positive contrast value. And it's very common in order to create contrast. In this course, we're not going to create contrast necessarily only by pushing and reducing values within highlights and shadows. But we want to create contrast, especially by using colors. And that means that this contrast knob is not very useful for us, especially right now as it does, like I said, the opposite of what we are looking for. So it pushes our highlights, therefore making it less capable of picking up color. And also at the same time, you give away control because the contrast knob, as it does two things at the same time. You could have a much better, you could have much more control in the curve when pushing and pulling. And basically doing the standard S-curve, which you might know already about. And you have much more control by doing that. That's just a general thing. And one other way though, let's delete this. You could work with the contrast is to use a negative value. And the negative value would be doing pretty much exactly what we need in terms of holding down the value of the highlight and actually also pushing the value of the shadow, therefore making it more capable of picking up color. But as the shadow is not usually too difficult to color in, and you can usually just go in in the, in the end of editing your image and just pushing a little bit in that range and you'll see how the color will come out. We, again, we don't need to give away control in the beginning just by using the contrast knob. Or we could go into the curve again and do an inverted S curve and end up with the same result. But more control. And we can be much more. The size of about where we want to pull down. And we don't want to pull down. So that's again, a better way to, to have more control. But this is one way. And honestly the curve is very, very good. But I'll show you in just in a bit how we can even be a bit better with the curve compared to that S shape. So we will delete this again and jump into the highlights knob as we might think now, okay, We tried to pull down the highlights, so let's see what the highlight thing does. And what we can tell straight away is that the highlights NOP is very targeted. Same time, maybe you can see it already. The highlights thus bring out this texture in the wall. And it leads to sort of unnatural effect, which is very reminiscent of, of course, this is where the highlights and shadows tools come from. It is very reminiscent of this typical HDR effect, which we don't want at all. And if you need to be using this carefully because it can quickly become that sort of look, especially if you're using extreme values in highlights or shadows, especially, and especially when you use a combination of both. So to me, the fact that we are getting texture in an area where there's highlight represented and there should be technically the least amount of texture. If you compare this also now here we have midtones and shadows. You have texture in the mid-tones, and that's great and good because you want to see the detail in here. But in the shadow, the shadow is completely fine if you lose detail like here or here. And that's why it's a shadow and that's how it makes an image more interesting by giving away some detail, but creating contrast in relation to the interrelation to mid tones and highlights. So we don't need to necessarily now push texture in an area where it's usually just there to represent the highlight. So I'm not the biggest fan of it, but at the same time I have to say that the highlights function in Photoshop and this row editor is very good, especially compared to the one and capture one for instance, where the catcher one highlights function, it looks even more HDR. This one is quite good and if you use it sparingly and not too extreme, you can see it's still pose down our highlight. It is very targeted. It does a little bit in the sky right here, but that's fine. As long as you don't use that too strongly, you will be, you can be in lots of images having a great tool when using the highlights knob. And this would be already with this value. This would be plenty and completely enough. Who color image at the same time, this image is not overly blown out, so we don't need too much anyway. But we will be able to improve the abilities of this image. And by, by picking up, by pulling down the highlights still. So this is one good way, but, but remember to use it not too strong, strongly. And there's another one is called white. And the white is much more subtle in its way. And as you can see, it doesn't bring out that texture which we just, which we were just seeing with the highlights. So that's a great way to make it look more natural. And I know it does look more flat, but that is good for us because the flatness will give us the opportunity to go to do more with that image in actual, in our actual editing. So don't be scared by having a flat image. And I know how this can be just something you might never use because you use that and it doesn't look punchy. But the punch will come with the colors. So that's just a few steps away before we do that. And I think that's great way honestly. And it is also very similar to what I would do with a curve and which is ultimately my favorite tool to use when pulling down highlights to prepare my image or colors. And I won't be going into the curve here, making sure that you are here in this mode where the gray dot is selected and not this one. Because here we can only create the sort of S curves and whatnot. And that's nothing we need at this point. So I'm going to reset out of that and go into this one. Where can graphically work the best with the curve itself. So the way I use the curve is I always start with the extremes. I never jumping right into the middle or somewhere. Because of the extreme is the area we need to be concerned about. It's an extreme, right? So let's check how the extreme reacts if we pull down. And what you can see now is, again, it looks dull, it looks flat. But again, this is great for us. And in photography it might be quite unpopular and not, not very established to flatten your image in order to proceed with your color grading. But if you look at videographers, it is very, very common that videographers shoot on an totally flat color profile just for the sole reason of having more control afterwards in color grading. And their profiles might be much more extreme, something like this. They will look and that Gibbs gives them great control and much more headroom when they are going into the, into their software and then later on calibrate the image. So we obviously don't have to be that extreme. But this is a great way for us to pull down our highlights. Still make it look natural, not have crazy texture coming out. And just make our image perfectly prepared for the next step to pick up our color. And this is where I leave this image for now. And you can see now when we go into the color grading, what we can do with that base. So as we've established in the beginning, we want to use warm highlights and call the shadows, right? So let's see in that orange hue, we can do in order to warm up our highlights. And it's probably somewhere in between orange and yellow. And just see, the further we go with the dots to the very edge of the circle, the more saturation of the color hue we introduce. You can also see this at the value of S. You see how it gets increased or decreased. And that's just a very simple saturation of that color hue. You pick basically on the very edge of the circle. And here you have the luminance. Basically you can see L is at 0 and the middle introduce positive luminance. Negative luminance, which for us now as we've already prepared our image with the curve in terms of luminance or value. That means that we won't need too much apart from maybe a slight adjustment as we can see, how much color we're introducing. So here now, let me just see which you of orange I would like to add. And I don't wanna be too close to the green because we will be adding some green. But maybe if we are bit closer to the red and be finding something suitable for this image. And this will be still a little bit intense. You will see that in just a minute. But with that orange, we can be quite strong because this is an image which speaks for itself in terms of warmth already without even doing too much to it. The situation is a warm situation with a sunset and generally with a warm light so we can be stronger and here, but then we need to be careful what we're gonna do with the shadows and mid tones as they will be very, quite likely to react very intensely with small adjustments even. So, let's jump in now into the shadows and see how we can contrast those warm highlights with blue shadows. So let's see. Now, we are going to be on this space of the color wheel. And we can start to introduce that blue tone. And you can see already that too much saturation would really just look too extreme. So we need to be careful. Oops, how much we're actually going to apply here. Let's see what we can do with the value of the shadows. We could even now start to introduce contrast by pulling down shadows if you'd want to and if your image allows you to. And that's a great creative way of introducing contrast to your image because you're already making a decision in terms of color. And not only read contrast with your values. So that's really good too, and a creative way to make your images look better. So let's see where we are happy with balancing between warm and cold. And I think that looks good at this, at this point. Now, as you can see, we have that blue point here and we have the orange point here. So our equal distance point would be somewhere in the green rights. So that would create a triadic color scheme equal distances from each color. And let's see where we add. And you can see again as we have so much saturation, it, we have to be very careful with the saturation introduced from the green color. And just add just enough for us to be ending up with that cinematic sort of luck. And again, we can use this one here. And it's just too weird. I think if you add too much of it, but probably leave that squared is at 0. And see if we can add a different hue. You can see now if we add here again, this would be split complimentary color scheme, less extreme, way less extreme. We could now reduce again with the orange. And you'd be even less extreme again, you can see. So sometimes you might be thinking, Oh, I might use this color scheme, but still test what is within the other worlds of color schemes. And you might end up with other, other better looking results. So that for this one, we're not using a split complementary color scheme. We're using a more intense color scheme, the triadic one. So we would be somewhere around here, resulting in a more cinematic look. And we can still try out something like this. Blue. We'd be having two times the blue, okay? And we could also make a split complementary color scheme by using two hues of blue. As with the split complementary color scheme, you would always have a base color and then you have two complimentary colors which are quite close to each other. But this is not what we're doing at this point. So we're just going to have a look and see what big of a difference it can make when we choose our mid-tones and the midtones. Also that always the two which sort of blends these shadows and highlights together. So for that cinematic look, being within green is quite good. And it sort of creates a nice situation which you might have seen in color grading before. So at the end, we have the option to use these blending and balance knobs. And they basically give us the opportunity to blend the colors and balance out the colors we have opted for. And you can see how this one goes much more towards the warm spectrum and this one towards the colder to in the end after choosing, you can sort of almost neutralized if there's too much of, let's say, too much coldness or too much warmth. And it's a great way to just do some fine adjustments in the end. And balance. Again, there's almost the same, just more subtle. So let's see if we add maybe it more saturation and to the 1 u. And now let's actually see what happens if we disengage the adjustments in the curve. And you can see how much more color there is actually in that white. You can still see color in that wide, but you see it mostly. And it's almost an optical illusion. You see it mostly here in those darker parts and here again, here, here, here. But if we were to be zooming in and let's go really close into that wide and we disengage the settings. We have something more yellow, yellow, yellow, whitish. But it is not like this, right? We have more color, although we are just disengaging the curve, we're not changing any color settings at this point, none at all. So this really shows how the color gradients is, is true ultimately how the color gradient and the lesson we take from how much value there has to be an order for color, hue, and saturation to be represented, have to be there. So let's see now what we can do in the curve to create just a bit more contrast within the values of that. As we now almost pretty much finalized with those colors, we can after, afterwards go in into the color temperature a little bit and just do some fine adjustments. But to now finalize the contrast, we can go in here and see what we can do if we want to maybe push again a little bit. We're not pushing at the very extreme, but we are pushing much closer to the midtones. So we still are able to retain the color in here. And let's see, the shadows are actually quite dark at this point. So maybe we can push a little bit in the extreme, in the extreme. And pull a little bit further away from the extreme. See how that will end up. Now, contrast is of obviously as well as color, a very subjective thing and stylistic thing. You could go more contrasty and really give here that guy shape in the phase by doing so and make it look more dramatic, it really depends. You want to be just a bit more revealing in terms of what is actually going on in the scene without creating too much drama, then you don't have to do too much obviously to it. So for this one, I think it's sort of frames this guy quite nicely. And as he's also here in front of that wide is really creates a nice contrast in terms, in terms of values and also ultimately with the colors. So now we've employed a typical S-curve, again, almost typical, but we haven't used that untrust knob at all. We didn't need it. We can maybe now at the end, see what it would do for us. But it's not something I would have liked to use in the very beginning, especially before we've added those colors. Now we can see, does it help us in any way? And now it's again, this sort of question of style and taste. If you want to just be a bit more strong in terms of your values. So we can also now do the opposite. Don't be afraid of using negative contrast values. It's quite common, especially for people who shoot on film and print in the lab and then scan the images, then we very often using negative contrast values. So we shouldn't be dismissing that completely. And so, but for this image, I'm happy with the contrast I created in the curve. And I can now see are the temperature will react. And if I wanted to be warmer, you could go crazy if you want to. And what it leads to actually is a nice mix of colors. Now this is too much in that highlights. I'd have to reduce again. But ultimately we are ending up almost with a sort of toque sky, which can be quite nice. So if we want to now counterbalance, we could always do that. We'd be still a bit one, maybe two yellowish. But we can always sort of balance out. And what we do in here by just finding a nice balance in between, you could be also much more cold if you like. But in this case, and it's not really it's not really suitable for that situation. And it's not really what it's asking us to do, a fear like. So here now we can also work with the tent again and see, do I like the green? Do I like to introduce more magenta? In this case, I actually like how the magenta looks. We still have a little bit of green, you can see here and here at the magenta works quite fine. And that's ultimately the point where it boils down to, yes, we want to employ color schemes and we want to get the best out of it, but only as a sort of reference when we look at an image and we are thinking of a concept, and we're thinking about what this image would want from us. What, whereas this image looking the best is it maybe with a split complimentary color scheme where we are just a bit more subtle, where we still create complimentary colors or the contrast. Or do we want something in your face intense? Because we really want to communicate that sort of feeling. Then we would use that sort of pallet scheme. But if we feel like we are too intense, you can always counterbalance it by using, for instance, the opposite color of that very color, which might be too intense in that case. So here the green we have seen in the color grading tool, how careful we have to be by adding green. And now if we want to lose some of that intense effect, you could go in here again in balance it out. But the importance here is if you know already you'd be using green. Don't start out with pushing into the magenta ready because you haven't gained the knowledge yet about what your image will interact with the color you want to apply on it. So that's balanced this a little bit out. And we'll end up with this nice cinematic effect. In the end, we can always test a little bit in the saturation tool and be like some people really like to desaturate the images just in the end, not completely, but just a little bit. And it's a matter of taste and how your image should be looking like in your imagination. And really feel free to work with the contrast that with the saturation as well in the end, but not, not in the beginning. So that's pretty much almost it. Always feel free obviously to see where maybe these other knobs might lead you to your haven't used in the beginning yet. But the black knob, for instance, makes it really nice. And these darker shadow areas and gives us just a little bit different type of contrast because it's more targeted. And the curve can't do that too much because the curve, in the end, if you click in here, you will always affect midtones. No matter if you're actually targeting or trying to target highlights or shadows, we always affecting a little bit more. So this is a nice way to be, again, quite specific. And, and you can see how it makes that image actually look. Now, that's pretty much it. The important thing is that you need to be working, of course, with a raw image as JPEG will have not the capabilities of being able to pick up all that colors we're going to add to. It won't be looking good at all. So make sure you're shooting in raw in order to make these sort of changes. And they actually be able to create these advanced looking looks because JPEGs are not made for. So for all of these adjustments, debits are made to be compressed file format, and a rod is not, not that compressed at all. So rho is therefore very good to make changes to. And here we're pretty much done in terms of colors. Could open this and just straighten that image a little bit. Instance. But that's just something you, we be doing in the end after we're happy with our colors. We really liked the four by five here. Very reminiscent film days. And you can be happy with your image. Make sure your lines are always straight, especially if you work in architecture and the background. Just generally lots of horizontal or vertical lines, then it's always important to make sure that they're straight. See how that looks. Not too good. You want to readjust what you've done. Make sure that the deleted crop pixels is not turned on and you can always go back and watershed were not an so much about that. And look at that on white. And that's it. I'll be like this. In the next one, we will be jumping into this split complimentary color scheme and see exactly what effects we can create by using those principles we have learned in the theory chapters before and apply these to a new image. Though I'll see you in the next one.
7. In Practice: Split Complementary Color Scheme: Hi, welcome back. In this chapter we're going to utilize the split complimentary color scheme. And we're going to have a look on how we can improve this image in terms of the looks, its colors. And see how the color scheme is capable of really bringing this scene to live, which right now is looking quite gray and will again utilize our knowledge in values and how it relates to the color, hue and saturation. And see how the color scheme actually differs also from the triadic color scheme, which we used in the chapter before. So with a triadic color scheme, it was pretty obvious that it created lots of tension and that we had to be quite careful in applying it, even if the ultimate goal was to create a dramatic look, you still have to be quite careful about how intense these colors are that you will actually apply. And that is all down to the relationships of the three colors in that color scheme and the distances to each other. So with the split complimentary color scheme, now, we basically use a base color. And then we go straight across the color wheel to the split complimentary color. And then we basically choose as a split complement, two colors very close to the center of it. So you basically see that the complimentary colors are very close to each other. That way you have the tension, contrast and the interest created by a complimentary color. But as you having two of them, which has quite close to each other, you don't have that extreme tension and you can work very nicely with it on almost all images. Even if you don't want to be too intense, you can still always use this as a base and reduce certain colors just a tiny bit. And still end up with something looking great and even quite natural. And just highlight and accentuate something by using this color scheme with this one, I want to go a bit more into it, so I don't want to be to tone down, but you can always obviously choose to do so. It really depends what you're looking for. But for this one, really urge you to discover this color scheme also in its intensity. And see where you can go and how far you can push things with this color scheme and also try out a few different ones for this image. I'd be keen on having a blue sky and then using the complimentary colors of sort of the orange spectrum. And then we'll see how that will look. So for this one, my main focal point will be actually the color blue. Because I want to emphasize that we are in a cloudy situation. And as we've talked about these cloudy days, really want to highlight that this is blue and that the atmosphere is filtering out most of that warm light, leaving us with a blue hue in, in our color temperature. So quite a cold color temperature. So let's start out by just seeing what we want to do with the color temperature. And I definitely don't want to be too cold here and I want to sort of reference her face in this case, this is what I like to do if I work with a portrait and I do the very first steps, I sort of reference the face and make sure that it's not like two bluish and that it looks sort of natural by now. On now. And then can continue basically. And you can see this is quite a high value. And this tells us already that the Kelvin outside the color temperature was quite cold. It must have been around five K or so Maybe, because if we are now at 7.5 or so, we start to get neutral if we look at the gray. So this is really telling us it was actually quite a blue day. If you don't correct this. So the blue must have been somewhere around here, almost maybe 5.5 or so. This is where you would end up if you don't correct for it, basically. So but for now I want to actually correct for it because I want the skin to look nice. But at the same time, I want to create the blue in the sky, which is they're obviously not as another blue sky like on a cloudless day. But I want to emphasize the fact that it's a cold day in terms of color temperature. Now, let's hang around. But of here. And I'm happy with that and the face, It's nothing final yet, but it's just the point to start out. And then here we want to decide ultimately. See now maybe if I tend to like it more in magenta, looks preferred in magenta or green. And I think I prefer a little bit more green in here. But that's really up to you and always come back in the end after you've done all the colors and see what really can be done with the tent. And also the temperature, of course, is just our baseline. So and now we can already see, I made sure in the last video and also in the theory video that we really make sure that we observe our values and that image. And that we need to see things like that. Where it's sort of not only is it uneven, that I wouldn't criticize the unevenness, but I would criticize that. As you can see here, this is almost that white. And you can see here this big spike in the histogram. And the histogram basically tells us here on the very right side, that this is the sides. This side is responsible for representing the highlights. This here you have the shadows. So in order to see that visually, without having to rely on a histogram, you want to make sure that your background is always set to white when you're when you're editing your images. Setting it to gray. Setting it to gray will not give you the possibility to judge the why'd you will not be able to see and you will always have to double-check, even if you have a spike in this area, you will have to double-check because as you corrected you, you need the visual representation. Also, black is not an option because black would only help you to determine how, how dark the blackest. And key we can see we have no problems at all with the black. We can also see that clearly because we have detail and black. And you would have no detail anymore if something's dead black. So, and that happens quite rarely anyway. And it's not too big of a problem in gen, most of the time in photography. But what is a problem very often is the highlight and SBA. I have to fight with that quite often with guys for instance. And especially if you don't have nag, the most expensive camera with very high dynamic range, then you have to be always concerned about this. Actually, no matter what your camera is, you should always be checking for that. And so make sure this is white. And then now we can utilize one of our ways to reduce that white and limited. So we bring it into a world where it's actually capable of of representing the color hue, which I want to opt for because right now we can see this will never pick up our color. This is just to white. It's just too bright. And as we've learned, the higher the well. And as we've learned, if the value is very, very high, very close to white, there cannot be a representation of a color, hue, and saturation. So it will be white instead of, let's say, LightBlue. So in this case now, I want to use the curve and just pull this down. And you can see with the curve, this works really well in this image. And I really like it because it's sort of brings these areas are so closer, this is still darker and I'm completely fine with it. I have no problem with that because this will be perfectly capable of picking up the color. This is just the main area of concern and it's doing its job really well. Of course, it looks sort of flat right now, but that's completely fine. Because as we've learned, we can look flattened the beginning in order to create contrast with colors in much better ways. So this is good for us. Makes sure view, Use the curve that you're in this mode right here and not in this one, which is usually the standards mode. Because he, you can't work with the very extreme, as you can see, it will always create this sort of curve. So let's reset that and just make sure you're in this second gray circle. So that's great for me now. And I'd be going into the color grading at this point and start with the highlights. So on here now, start to look what sort of blue I would like. And you can already see how much more interesting this image is starting to look compared to the gray, gray, gray. And sort of see where I'd like to be the blue, obviously also how much saturation I want in the blue. And which HW Exactly. And I think this is a point where I'd like to start out with. So let's see how this looks, even if it's a bit extreme right now. And we can always adjust then. And then. Now the split complimentary color scheme, as we've opted for this, blue, would basically tell us, pick two more colors, which in the area of the complement. But we don't pick the exact complimentary color scheme. We pick one to the left and one to the right of it, just very close to the center of the extra complimentary color of blue. So let's do the shadows first. Then. As I tend to colored shadows in green rather than mid-tones out, pick this color here for the, for the first complimentary color. See how much I really want for the actually quite like it because it works well with her hair as well. And we're also starting to make a face just look a bit more healthy because it, it became quite blue and that's fine as well. If we have the option, we're not going to say no. And let's see you on the mid-tones. Now I don't want to use too much saturation. This brings in a nice warm for actually, and it's a nice complement to the blue. And you can tell now the blue really doesn't look too crazy anymore because we have added these complimentary colors. And now this relationship they share creates a nice contrast, but it's sort of justifies the intensity of the blue. And we can even go stronger. Therefore, you see, and that's completely fine. Always depends a bit on your mock. Always depends on your monitor as well. So my changes will always look different on your monitor. I'm working here on a color calibrated ISO screen. And you might be working on, I don't know, on a laptop screen, which is not calibrated or so. And then also the fact that you are watching this on a certain browser will also change the colors because every browser has different color settings and gamma settings as well, which impacts the extra contrast and saturation of the colors you will see. So that's why I urge you to try this, please yourself as well, and go into the chorus and see what happens. Because it will never look exactly like it would look to you if you would be looking over my shoulder. So try to use these principles on your images and see where you end up with and use this as your guide and you are a form of knowledge about this topic if you haven't heard about it yet. So Let's continue to work with those midtones. And it's fine to warm this up because we have learned how you actually have this complimentary colors in the real world. And right now we are maybe a bit too yellow, but maybe a bit too close here to the shadow. So we can go a bit further here. And we don't have to obviously because we are always a bit free to be off, just a little bit off from our actual reference. Nobody will, nobody will read us badly if we just do hit a little bit off the split. Complimentary color scheme, though that's completely fine. And it's actually she see our values, how they work out. We shouldn't be needing too much in here because we've done our job with the highlights and the mid tones and shadows. They're quite fine. We could add color now in the shadows by pushing. You can see how it adds color. We're just pushing the value. You can see it here. Luminance. Luminance, and luminance means rarely. Basically, though you see we add color just by pushing the luminance and we're actually adding quite a bit of green here. And maybe we'd like that even just a tiny bit. So, and let's see here this shouldn't need much at all. And this again, you see how it determines how much saturation of the color you is represented. So and then the end I like to check the blending and see you can create, you can adjust for the overall balance of the colors you have actually just opted for. So here, I actually like this a little bit because it adds back some blue and the highlight of the face. And that makes sense. Completely fine if it's quite warm and it just gives her this a natural like healthy skin tone that's really good. Always be concerned with skin tones when you work on portraits. But we still preserving the actual coldness of the color temperature and that is also very good to do. So if we can have both, then I'm more than happy with this skin tone. So and now we have created nice complimentary colors in this image. And what we can now do is we can work on the contrast in terms of its values. So we did create no contrast without actually introducing any value contrast so far. So contrast created by increasing highlights and decreasing shadows in value. And. Well, this is already like, you wouldn't be necessarily like craving the contrast here in terms of its values because we have done so much to it, although we have actually decreased so much contrast just by pulling down this, let's actually see how this looks. When we disengage the curve. If the other color will actually look especially in the sky, you can see it looks bad, very bad. We, the only areas where you have color is areas where there's still some information where there is where there's more of a gray tone instead of that super white. And this is precisely why I urge you to work with your values. First, just so you can add your colors. Because so many photographers try to achieve great colors and interesting color grading. But their values are all over the place. The values don't account for the fact that it needs to be toned down for the hue to be represented. I know I'm repeating myself here, but I see this way too often. And this is, we all know this sort of look. We can create a much nicer look. If we're just wary of that, you don't have to pull it down so much, but just put it down at least where you have the color and you don't end up with only color within those edges where there's like a transition between a midtone and the highlight. It will always look weird. This just blew. It almost looks like something I'd like to correct because it looks like a mistake created by the lens, like some artifacts or so. And that's just not good. And the sky in reality, if you were on the field, it doesn't look like that. It's white and then it's blue. Although it's just a cloudy day. No. I mean, it doesn't have to look this blue like that. It didn't necessarily look also that blue on that day. But still we're creating, we're trying to be interesting as photographers and colors, a main tool for that. So just make sure you're valued sits in the right place. And enough of me insisting on that now. So Let's have a look now actually, if we can create some contrast, now be happy to use this contrast, not just to see where we can go by using it. And you can see we don't really need much, really don't need much. And I see this very often with high level photographers that they are contrast will be at 0 because they work with their colors. Then I see there's very rarely though with beginner, so intermediate or hobby photographers, the contrast knob will be always somewhere jacked up. It will be quite strong muscle. And we don't need this too much. It's like we can use this quite sparingly. If your colors are doing its job. If you have to use this a lot, then it means that your colors are not doing too much. Then you can be maybe more interesting actually by employing more interesting colors and making sure that your value sit in the right place so that they actually properly employed and not just part-time workers. So this is a full-time employment for the colors here. And we want to see now if we can maybe do something more in the curve and maybe push a little bit and the shadow. I think, yeah. Things here. Again, what I like to do is just push the very extreme and then go into the shadows and just pull it down a little bit. So and here maybe again, we could create some contrast, but honestly, this is really doesn't need that much. We've done quite a good job with the colors itself, that it's really not so necessary right now. And think actually at like to delete this, I'm not too happy with that. The collector probe is actually more down here. And maybe push a little bit here as it now sort of flattened to the face a bit too much. And that's really nice. So let's go back to the color grading and see. We can just those shadows maybe a little bit. And you can see also here, I like this as well. Like I always try around and just use this as a general principle of creating interesting color rates. So here this is pretty much it and free disengaged this. You can see my God, where we came from almost and I'd be very happy with this image. So this point is not too much to do anymore. We could go into the color mix and you could go into each color and adjust for it if you have a certain color, which is really bugging you and you think on this color, I don't like too much, but I really like how are the rest works? And you can always go in here and let's say this green, don't like it too much. And I wanted different, slightly different hue of that green or maybe desaturated. Then you can really go into finer detail with economics. And it's a great tool definitely because it's so targeted and you don't have to worry about it messing up too much on your image. And it's, yeah, it's a really nice tool for that as well. But this is really the last thing you wanna do. Don't start out with that because you will, you will make changes with the color grading and it will affect your colors. You have just changed again. So the variant and just like to double-check these first initial values we've worked with. And I think this actually where they are. Yes, there's not much I would change at this point. So I hope this was helpful for you with basically no applied the same sort of principles in terms of values. And how to create contrast by using colors, not being very reliant on the contrast knob at it at all. Actually, we have done just tiny adjustment in the curve. This is so little. And this really shows the power of colors. And it really shows how the colors can do its job in creating contrast without being reliant on just creating contrast by pushing one simple knob. So thanks for watching. I hope this helped you. And in the next one we will be having a look at the analogous color scheme. And the color scheme, which is very, very simple, and all the colors next to each other. So we will see if that is really, if that's a good color scheme for us to use, which benefits it might have and which disadvantages it will bring us. So stick around for that one and I'll see you then.
8. In Practice: Analogous Color Scheme: Now that we have looked into those two color schemes before, which capable of producing great contrast by using complimentary colors will be looking into a much more simple and easier color scheme to work with. And that is the analogous color scheme. The analogous color scheme gives us the opportunity to work with three colors again, but with three colors which are quite close to each other. So we could be having, for instance, blue hue and another blue hue and a hue of green. And that's typically what you would end up with. You'd have two similar colors and then a hue of one color, which is already out of that color. So blue, blue, green, but just two different hues of blue. Or you could have red, orange, orange and then yellow, greenish. And there's lots of ways to do to use that. And again, it's just a reference to use when we feel like this would be something we want to try out one image. And I'm using this image, especially because it is quite monochromatic at this point. And if we want to stay within that world and we don't want to be too off of what we have seen here. We can use this color scheme to create a look which is easy on the eyes, which looks quite harmonious anyway. And it's not too challenging for the viewer. So with this one, we see also that we don't have any issues with highlights. Actually. The highlights really nice. And again, make sure that you are on white because on the fault. I could guess maybe okay, that the white is fine. You can also see it in the histogram here represented on the right-hand side. And that the spike is quite as much more closer to the midtones. Here we are in the highlights, but not whites, as you can see here indicated. So that's completely fine for us. But always make sure you're on the white so you can make the better judgment. So in this case, actually, we're fine, right? We don't need to pull down here. Maybe we can do a little bit, but we could even do that in the end after adding color. And in doing that, by doing that, we could introduce more color. So now I just want to see where I want to be at. Two, I want to create a warm looking image. And you know, with this one we'll do both with a warm look and we look code look. So this one is probably has been a colder situation. But I also want to show you how you can manipulate something to be looking completely different in terms of its mood, just by using warm colors, even in a cold situation. But let's start out with a cold situation to really highlight are that they might have been. That's already close enough for me. And add some green out. The marking on the green here. And it mixes two quite nice blue-green mix. And see where we add. Maybe we can push a little bit in terms of exposure. Me using my arrow keys on the keyboard, do that. And I'm not going to be using any of the right. So jumping into the color grading tool and see where our highlights will be. And add some blue. See which blue is the most suitable for our highlights. And I'd like it to be sort of this blue closer to the green, but that of the aqua, he would call it photo, but just with less saturation. And let's go into the shadows. Shadows I'd like to be further away and like to be the mid-tone. Like the mid-tones to be in-between the highlights and the shadows. So it does its job of blending and ultimately the midtones. So if here we could push some shadow, actually more color going on there. And the highlight will probably. So now this is a very blue looking image and you can see how well these actually work together. Actually, these midtones are quite close to where the shadows are. Just in between, pretty much. But you see this in terms of the glucose would be creating, is not as interesting, is not as vibrant, as punchy as the split complimentary or the triadic color scheme. So this might be something you want to use for images where you want to be very sort of laid back, you know, not too intense, not so challenging. But you could always be like, Well, let me just use one color now. Tried this and I don't think it's too interesting. Let me just make warm shadows. And here we go. See much more interest again in that image. And this would lead you actually then to a split complimentary color scheme. The one color scheme might easily and quickly lead you into the other one. And it's good to have these three schemes in, in your palette of tools in your toolbox. So you can quickly try out what you like if you know you want to call it looking image. But it's eventually turns out to be too cold if you use an analogous color scheme, just see what happens if you use the complement of that color, basically employing the split complimentary color scheme. So it's a great way to work with your images. And in this case, we have now by the blue looking image. And that's basically what the analogous color scheme would do. We could have now read hues of blue almost, or we could have just one color a bit further away. See, there's, these would all be classified as analogous color schemes, as these colors are all quite close to each other. And you can see it doesn't result in the most vibrant interesting effect though, something I need to show you as well. So let's actually now have a look into creating a warmer look in this one. So I can actually show you how you can not always be just true to what you might have seen, but how you can actually maybe make something more interesting by warming something up and, and just trying to look different. So don't be scared of using extreme values here because it doesn't matter. This need to be worried about how your image looks. And they're like maybe just a little bit less. And then we can jump into integrating tool again. And went to the highlights. So OK. And add some water to here. And analogous color scheme so the shadows will be warms well, but maybe more red. Saturation of that red. And the mid-tones wouldn't be somewhere in the yellow. And you actually do this and see how much more CUDA we get. This case. We would now really have to create contrast going an S-curve. But you could still leave it on this image. We could intensify the whole look still by pulling down here and then just give contrast with an S curve. And again, I'm pushing a little bit in the stream of the black. And this is another located could create. Again, it is not the most vibrant effect as we are so close in terms of the colors, we're using. Red, orange, yellow, green. So it's very close to each other. You could again now say, okay, I'm not too happy with how it looks. Maybe it's just not vibrant. Very interesting enough. So you could start now creating more contrast and using here a colder color again for those highlights. And then was all this back fighting right now with, with that. And again, you have something more interesting. And that's ultimately one of the lessons of this course as well. That contrast is not only interplay of values in an image, but the interplay of the colors and that we have seen on the color wheel how the contrast can be created, and that it's determined by the relationship of the colors on the color wheel and the distance of the colors on the wheel, but further apart from each other, the more contrast we are capable of creating. And you can very well see here that the closer those colors are, the more reliant we are on values in terms of image. Here we ended up really quickly that we had done looking image just by pulling down the highlights, although we had added all the colors. And you might remember in the last two ones we've done, we pull down the highlights. It looked dull, but we added one color and it didn't look down anymore. Here. We had all the color on it on already. And just pulling down a little bit of that brightest highlight, ended up with, ended up with an image looking to Doll. At this point, you see this looks a little bit too dark at this point. And to be careful and introduce contrast because our colors are not doing the job of giving us contrast. So that's a very important lesson. If we want to create interesting color looks and where we want a contrast to come from. And using these color schemes. Great way to have a few different ways of introducing contrast to our images. So now that you have seen that we are not capable of creating too much contrast with an analogous color scheme. And that very easy though, to create the contrast just by using one complimentary color. We have gone through all the necessary bits to equip you with all the things you need to know about how to create interesting contrasts with colors or to prepare your image nicely so that it picks up the colors. We have also learned what not to do. If you have in mind that you want to create something vibrant looking, something contrasty looking, contrasty by the use of colors. That's ultimately what this lesson is for. I personally don't use that analogous color scheme too, too often really. It's just not interesting enough for me, but It's great to highlight how the relationship of the colors can be applied on an image and what effect they actually lead to her. I hope you've enjoyed this lesson. I hope you've enjoyed all the theory and I hope that you feel well equipped now in order to be working on your own images with the lessons you've learned. Thank you for watching and have a nice day.
Kad Cadau
