playing around with limited color ...your thoughts? full color saturated up top muted below ...i think i like the muted better....
playing around with limited color ...your thoughts? full color saturated up top muted below ...i think i like the muted better....
I love BW photography. De saturated color is harder to get the hang of, but has lots of potential. I love the desat look of a lot of the stuff Fursty does (check instagram).
But that's besides the point, what I really want to know is how did you miss this great composition of the waterfall pool and bowl of rocks with the brilliant autumn trees in the background? Go back ASAP and focus in on that region! I think you have a lot of potential for some tighter compositions there! ;)
you are right i do it was just a pathetic little dribble spewing out that for some reason didn't interest me that day i was more into the rocks haha..but i will go back this weekend and see if i can get out the long lens and get in on tighter comps thanks as always David
If there was more water flowing that would be great, but what caught my eye was the shape of the 'bowl' of rocks around the small pool and the brilliant greens, yellows and oranges of the trees above. I cropped it to keep that large rock int he foreground bottom L but you could probably find some other shots in here too. Maybe a portrait shot bringing more of the trees in from the background. A higher perspective might show more of the pool too and if you did a long exposure of 30 seconds or so, you might get some of the tree color reflected back in the pool.
i didn't realize long exposure helped with reflections good tips thanks David
If there's some motion in the water that's intermittently breaking up a good reflection, going long (like longer than 30 seconds) can smooth the water enough that the reflection starts to rebuild in the final image. It won't be a mirror reflection, but more noticeable than if you tried to freeze the water instead. Sometimes anyway.
just looked that kid up he's got some crazy skills thanks for the look
Hi Joseph,
Desaturation works well if you focus on a particular colour mood. Cool blues, warm golds and so on. Simply moving the saturation slider to the left won't achieve the same effect. I don't know what you use for post-processing, but if you're using LR, you could use a combination of desaturation, split toning, white balance and local adjustment colour to get the effect you want.
David's reference to Fursty on Instagram... If you check out Fursty's portfolio, you can see that he desaturates his images, but he a) first chooses compositions/locations that work well with a cool colour cast, and b) selectively desaturates the warmer shades out of his images.
In your image, I love the trees and bit of warm colour in the picture. The problem with the rest of the image is that the water is hardly visible and is overshadowed by the rocks. The water looks grey and static. You could try to get a bit closer to the pool of water, maybe a little higher off the ground and retake the shot. You could maybe desaturate the image, but use a dual tone to add some colour back. A little bit of warmth for the foliage in the background and a little cooler for the rocks and water.
Sid
awesome info thanks Sid i just watched a youtube video a did the same process as the he did and then added a few things just trying something new for a change i definitely need to look this guy up thanks again
Hmm, I agree the top one seems a bit too much, but the other is too cool, I think it is the yellows of the top one that bothers me. Do you know how to just desat or cool down just one color. If not let me know and I will guide you through it.
in selective color? there are so many sliders the creatives at PS should have named the program sliding board...ive been playing around with just about everything to see what it does
There are a couple of ways, but try adjustment layer, hue and saturation first. Use either the yellow option from the color option box {below preset box and next to the hand pointer tool) then below you can select whether to desat,lighten etc, use the mask (and paintbrush from left panel) if you want some of the yellows not to change. Hope that helps, I like to desat greens sometimes.
thanks Loretta
The first thing to address in any picture is white balance, get that right first. If you start messing with colors with incorrect WB then you'll be off to a bad start.
Quick example, let's say you have taken a shot and it's too warm so it looks yellowish. You skip WB correction and instead desaturate yellow. Now the picture looks weird, because it isn't warm, but it's not cool either.
Once you have WB nailed, desaturate greens (50%), now you have a good starting point.
lol Thorsten you know me well enough by now that i am not getting the hang of the stupid balance ...but i will i promise ...one of these days i will surprise you. ok i will try it ...does perfect white balance mean that the sliders would be in the middle because every pic i take the B/Y slider is in the blue and the G/M slider is slightly in the magenta
I guess I'll make a short video, it's simple, really. Here's a step by step for Photoshop:
1) right-click the image layer, conver to smart object
2) from the filter menu, pick camera raw filter
3) you are now in adobe camera raw (ACR)
4) zoom in on something that you know must be white (gray works too, if in a pinch)
5) pull the sliders for saturation and vibrance all the way to the right
6) your "white" subject now looks either yellow, blue, green or magenta
7a) if it is yellow, pull the B/Y slider towards blue until it turn either green, magenta or white
7b) if it is blue, pull the B/Y slider the other way, see a)
7c) if it is green, pull G/M slider towards magenta
7d) if it is magenta... you get the idea.
8) repeat until you have something that could pass as white
9) pull vibrance and saturation sliders back to 0 again, press OK
Ok a monkey could do that ....I'll try when I get home in half hour thanks Thorsten .....a video would be great but you explain it well enough I didn't think white balance was so literal I thought it was balance in overall I'm age while shooting
Correct, WB means just that, whites/grays render as such, that's why you're supposed to shoot a white cardboard to set it.
Cool means, white tones look blueish, warm means white tones look yellowish.
It's called white BALANCE because you need to balance the blues/yellows and greens/magentas out so that what you know must be white actually looks white.
Our eyes adjust automatically, because we know from experience that certain things must be white, so the brain does the white balance on the fly and we never notice that the colors actually look different in sunlight or at night.
ok ill get on it tonight maybe i can fix some of my most recent shots...btw do you reset the camera every time you go out or is once sufficient
I either set WB to auto or I use my Expodisc.
Here's what that picture looks like after a) WB correction, b) 50% green desaturation, c) 10% overall desaturation.
yeah thats what i meant to do ..lol ...yes this is much more pleasing to the eye i was just not sure which slider to adjust like you said i adjusted the yellow and all the warmth went bye-bye and it just got cold...my wife looked over at me and said... eww wheres the color?
hows this?
Better, but still very warm.