Photographers know better than most: how you edit a photograph can totally chance the perception of that photo for the viewer. But a new online photo history quiz wants to make this explicit, showing how converting a photo to black-and-white can trick us into thinking a photo is much older than it really is.
I’ve been restoring and also coloring historical photographs for a little over two years. Towards the end of last year, I received a request to work on an image of Abraham Lincoln. Little did I know, this request would change the direction of my work forever.
Color is complex. Achieving great color can be cumbersome, both in analog and digital workflows, and developing and researching it has been as hard as rocket science.
Datacolor has announced the ColorReader EZ, a new portable tool that's designed to simplify matching, selecting, and coordinating colors.
It's my belief that color is actually one of the most subjective elements that we as humans all understand, yet we actually have no real way of enforcing or translating it to one another.
Photographers can learn a lot about composition and color theory from great cinematography. Case in point: in this video, filmmaker Sareesh Sudhakaran of Wolfcrow explains how great movies will often use the 'Three Color Rule' to capture and keep a viewer's attention.
Want to learn the secrets of color grading in photography? Photographer and retoucher Joanna Kustra recently gave an hour-long webinar on the subject, and she has now made it freely available for anyone to learn from.
Photographer, computational biologist, and science presenter Andrew Steele just released a fascinating short video about his favorite optical illusion. By manipulating a function of your visual system, he shows you how you can trick your brain into "adding" color to a black-and-white image.
The folks running NASCAR's social media accounts gave photographers a good chuckle this week. In a post announcing a big victory by one of its drivers, they mocked up some "contact sheets" of positive color images that look like they were taken with Ilford HP5 Plus black and white film. Oops...
Martin, the host of about photography, has put together a timely and inspiring ode to the work of photographer Harry Gruyaert—a master of his craft and Magnum photographer whose approach to using color, and his passion for photography in general, is worth studying, admiring, and emulating.
The folks over at Sandmarc—a company that specializes in accessories for iPhones, drones, and action cams—have just released two new LED panels called the Prolight Collection. And based on specs alone, both lights seem to be versatile, small, and surprisingly affordable for what you get.
For those that have followed my work for a while, you’ll know that I love to show a sense of depth to my images. Sure we can all shoot wide-open (f/2.8 for example) to get that shallow depth of field, but nothing beats the depth of showing not only a separation between subject and background, but a foreground element to your image too.
Earlier this week, Datacolor packaged three of it most popular image and monitor calibration tools into a new bundle for photographers called the SpyderX Photo Kit, and they'll be offering it at a steep discount "while supplies last."
Photographer Jacob Carlson has put together a photography tutorial you don't expect to see in the year 2020. In his latest video, he'll show you how to use the 160-year-old three color process to capture color photos using black & white film.
San Diego-based photographer Angela Garzon recently teamed up with fashion and art blogger Sarah Grossman to inject a bit of color and creativity into the world during these strange and difficult times. The result is a set of six monochromatic "group" shots captured using only the clothes and props they had at hand.
I get asked all the time about my process: what applications I use, what gear I use, how I do what I do. So I figured, since I'm locked in my apartment by myself because of COVID-19, I might as well write my first blog post about it.
Panasonic recently partnered up with India's Dentsu Aegis Network to create something really cool. Following in the footsteps of those glasses that "reverse" certain types of colorblindness, the company created a Panasonic G90 with a specially designed viewfinder lens that lets colorblind photographers see color.
Photographer and YouTuber Andrew of Denae & Andrew created a comparison that plenty of photographers will be very interested in: Canon vs Fujifilm color science. A lot is made of Fuji's film simulations, and Canon users won't shut up about their amazing skin tones. But when you put them side-by-side in a blind "taste test," which do you actually prefer?
Color is so important in landscape photography. The correct harmony of colors can make a huge difference to an image and help to create your own style. In this 20-minute video, I talk about how I create a painterly look in my photos and how I edit in Lightroom.
Check out this photo. Although it may look like a color picture upon first glance (and even more so if you squint or view it from a distance), it's actually a black-and-white photo with thin color grid lines overlaid on it to trick your brain into filling in the missing color.
How do you think your perception of color stacks up against the general public? If you're a photographer, have your eyes been trained to perceive color better than the average person? Here's a short and sweet test that can help you find out.
We photographers obsess about finding the right light. We understand how to use hard light, when to use soft light, and get excited by directional light. Portrait photographers learn how to control light using flashes and modifiers, and become experts in getting the most from natural light.
Datacolor today launched its latest color calibration tool for monitors. Called the SpyderX, it's Datacolor's "fastest, most accurate, and easiest to use color calibration tool" -- "the best Spyder ever."
I’m not sure on what day I realized that my street photography work had become overly homogeneous, and sometimes asinine. “Oh look, a red car and a red shirt. click.” I’d been in love with the look of Fujifilm’s Classic Chrome (based off of Kodak Kodachrome) and had begun to shoot a lot of color for color’s sake.
Most mammals rely on scent rather than sight. Look at a dog’s eyes, for example: they’re usually on the sides of its face, not close together and forward-facing like ours. Having eyes on the side is good for creating a broad field of vision, but bad for depth perception and accurately judging distances in front.
Something I’ve always found difficult was knowing when an image should be converted to black and white and when it should be left in color. It’s one of the more contested discussions in photography and there really isn’t a “black and white” or cut and dry answer to it. After much trial and error, I’ve come up with three questions that I consistently ask myself when trying to determine if a color image is a good candidate for B&W.
After years of shooting portraits with Canon cameras, photographer Sean Tucker recently switched over to Sony gear. After many people warned him that his portraits would suffer from Sony's "terrible" skin tones, Tucker decided to put the cameras to the test himself in the 20-minute video above.
In this article, we're going to briefly look at the subjectivity of color. This is a colossal subject, but I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how color is perceived by each of us and whether it's really that important.
The three-color method of using colored lens filters when shooting black-and-white photos was one of the earliest techniques for creating color photos. This 11.5-minute video is an exploration of how this process is done.
I ran across yet another case of Holy Cow Look At These Russian Photos, in which the photographs of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky were showcased. In 1902, Prokudin-Gorsky learned the method of shooting three negatives (color separations) and then projecting them in registration through filters to produce projected color images.
Discussions of many photography topics have the potential to veer deep into complex technical territory that may appeal more to scientists than to artists, and color theory is certainly one of those topics that can become rather arcane quite easily. What follows is a guide for landscape photographers who are more artistically inclined, those who are primarily interested in applying color theory to achieve creative goals.
In the 1950s, early color photography was widely scorned. Now it’s the default. What happened?
Whether you're aware of the correct terminology or not, you have likely experienced color contamination happening in your photographs already. Put simply, color contamination is when one color is affected by the presence of another color in close proximity.
Here's a 5-minute tutorial from Evan Ranft that shows you why and how you can easily split tone your photos for better colors using Adobe Lightroom.
Digital colorizations of historical photos have gotten quite a bit of attention in recent years. Retrographic is a new photo book that brings this concept to physical pages. It's a collection of some of the world's most well-known black-and-white historical photos transformed into living color.
Looking for some ideas for creatively altering the look of your photos? Here's a 2-minute video by photographer Jessica Kobeissi that runs through 5 handy hacks. Using everyday items, you can easily introduce some abstract color into portraits.
Is there an unwanted color cast spoiling your photo? Correcting this is really simple when you use the curves tool, as demonstrated by PiXimperfect in this 7-minute tutorial.
In this 9-minute tutorial from photography Andrew Boey of Beyond Photography, learn how to use a white wall to create any color backdrop you want by using just a speedlight and a colored gel.
Say hello to colorspike, a powerful animation-driven LED light stick that can revolutionize how you think about adding colored light to photo shoots and video projects.
Changing the color of an object using Photoshop is a typical use case for the software, and there are many ways to do it. This 20-minute video from Nathaniel Dodson of tutvid that examines 5 separate ways to re-color or add color to objects.