New Book: Mastering Digital Color for photographers, digital and traditional artists, art schools and workshops, and more...

generic header New Book: Mastering Digital Color for photographers, digital and traditional artists, art schools and workshops, and more...

Scroll Down to Read New Excerpts From Chapter Three: Mastering Digital Color will help you to: Capture more color in your photographs Control your color during image processing and editing Scan film more effectively Make better prints This is a practical handbook that will help you improve image quality and reenergize your business. Use this link to learn more about the book at Amazon.com, or continue reading below... Scroll Down for Excerpt From Chapter Three and text from Chapter Two: Digital capture is more demanding than shooting film or transparencies. In fact, a variance of 1/10 of a stop can make the difference between success and a painful, difficult post-production process. Digital capture is very sensitive to under- or over-exposure, and either of these can affect color in unexpected ways. I use a hand-held exposure meter more than ever. (An exposure meter is a device that measures light intensity and calculates shutter and aperture settings appropriate for a selected film/sensor ISO, or light sensitivity.) This is directly linked to the physical characteristics of digital camera sensors. Our eyes and brain see much differently than a digital sensor. Our eyes adjust to a scene with amazing flexibility, allowing us to see a range of brightness that is many times greater than any currently available recording device. Digital sensors record images in terms of light levels. The brightest part of an image provides most of the information, and the darkest part the minority of information. This type of recording is linear in nature. Some photographers think that now that they have digital, they can fix a poor exposure in Photoshop. But given the recording characteristics of digital sensors, any over-exposure will make your life difficult, if not downright miserable. Like transparencies, information lost in the highlights is difficult, or impossible, to recover. And the highlights contain the majority of the information in your image! How do you tell when your exposure is correct? If you are in the studio, use a hand-held exposure meter. I recommend that you put your set-ups together the old-fashioned way--one light at a time, metering each light separately. This has of course been the subject of many books. On location, you will often use the in-camera exposure meter to assist in setting your exposures. However, it is still best to back up your decision with information from a hand-held meter. If this is not practical, do try to use a range of exposures, from slightly under-exposed to slightly over-exposed (this is called bracketing). Many pro-level cameras offer this as an option and allow you to choose two- or three-frame bursts. Next, many people use the LCD screen on the camera to preview the image--but this display is often limited in terms of correct brightness, contrast, and color. The best way to evaluate your exposure once the image is taken is to use the histogram display on your camera. Although this option also has some limitations, it is a much better indicator than the LCD display on the camera, particularly when you are in bright ambient lighting. As you gain experience with a particular camera, you'll soon know how accurate your histogram is (see Figure 3.16). Complete Text from Chapter Two: One of the biggest problems involved in discussing the subject of color management tools used by photographers and artists is the issue of finding the balance between generalities and detail, between everyday practicality and theory, and between one technical option and another. There are plenty of available definitions of color management. Here are a few examples: • In computerized processes, attempting to hold colors the same no matter in what medium they are displayed or printed (Zelanski) • Software that translates the colors of an original image into the truest representation obtainable on the output device (Computer Dictionary/Farlex) • A technology to calibrate the color of input devices (such as scanners or digital cameras), display devices, and output devices (such as printers or offset presses). Parts of this technology are implemented in the operating system (OS), or directly in the application (Dictionary/Labor Law Index) Many of the reviews, articles, and the like that I’ve seen, although written by brilliant individuals, leave me a bit underwhelmed or even confused when it comes to translating these ideas into everyday successes. Sometimes we’re offered too many options. As you’ll notice more than once while reading this book, I’m focused less on a detailed discussion of every possible alternative and more interested in getting high-quality results at reasonable cost in time and money. I’m going to leave out the pictures of eyeballs in cross-section and the optical physics charts. What I hope to do is to help you understand how you can create the best possible images in the most efficient manner. I’m also going to do my best to stick to using everyday language in this book and ask that you learn new terms only as necessary and as they support your understanding of the subject. Much of this discussion of getting a grip on your color and how we define color management centers on managing your tools from the earliest stages of your work to completion: • From the eye to the camera • From the camera to the computer • Film scanner image processing and RAW image processing • Editing and saving the digital file Good color management involves keeping as much of the color and detail as possible in the image, from capture, through production, to final output. This kind of “road map” might not be exactly what you had in mind when you picked up this book. But it is critical that you understand this idea and that mastering it will help preserve the color inherent in your work from the beginning and will enhance its appearance and marketability when it is completed. This road map describes efficient, effective management of the tools available to you as a photographer and artist. This chapter will, hopefully, show you: Important aspects of how each tool handles color What may be available for you to control the effect or influence of each tool on color and image detail How you can choose to use these tools to get the high-quality result you want at reasonable cost From the Eye to the Camera Our eyes, developed and refined over millions of years, work in close harmony with our brains to aid us in perceiving what we call “color.” The complex range of light intensities and colors that we can see is the result of this incredible combination. I’m sure we’ve all noticed from time to time that not everything we can see can be recorded on camera film or on a digital camera sensor. A classic example is an image of a “perfect” sunset, as shown in Figure 2.2, which once developed, just doesn’t quite live up to the vibrancy seen at the time the image was taken. Figure 2.2 This image captures a very wide range of tones but still can’t match what I saw when the photograph was taken. (Fuji Velvia 50, scanned) The fact is that our eyes and brain can see far more than any digital sensor or film can record. In both range of color and range of tones from light to dark, our eyes and brain in concert can see far more than film. Using a common term, such as a stop in photography, is quite useful here. As you know, stops in photography represent a progression in the intensity of light reaching a sensor or film. Examples include 1, 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, and 22. Each step from left to right in this progression represents a reduction of 50% in light intensity; so, for example, the numeral 2 represents half as much light as the numeral 1.4, and so on. . Our eyes and brain, looking at an entire scene (the whole thing, not just a portion of it), can perceive about 15 stops of difference from the brightest part of a scene and the darkest. Film can perceive around 7–10 stops, transparencies can perceive only 4–5 stops, and photographic darkroom prints can perceive approximately 3–4 stops. Another way to look at this is that our eyes and brain can perceive a range, from deep shadows to brightest highlights, of about 10,000:1. Most printed photography media, on average, can render 200:1. This has several implications, as follows: Given the tools available now, we can’t really expect that the full range of color and details that we can see in person can be fully represented in a final print. What we record on film or via a digital sensor involves a “translation” of the color we see into the color the film or sensor can actually record. One way to refer to the color that the film or sensor can record is its color space. Any additional step in processing that we take, from film developing techniques, to scanning, to editing via computer, to printing, involves additional “translations” of the image and color from one media or device to the next. These translations from one color palette or color space to another are an important part of color management. A good translation, as with any language, means that the message will be understood. A poor translation, obviously, means the opposite—it can introduce distortions in the image. Color management tools allow you to manage these translations to your benefit. So, what happens to all of the color that we can perceive but that is probably not kept on film or digital sensor, for example? Some of this color is recorded accurately by the film or sensor, some of it is lost, and some color is placed into the color space of the film or digital sensor. Color Space Color space is a term that drives many people up the wall, and sometimes that includes me. I think that this is the case, at least in part, because this phrase is used by so many people who are using different tools and are trying to achieve different goals. As a photographer and artist, I tend to think of color space as I might imagine a painter’s color palette. In a sense, a color space describes what is contained in that palette: how many individual colors there are, how many variations exist of each color, how dark or light they are, where they are located in the palette, and so on. Some palettes are bigger and more varied than others, and some palettes have different colors—and the same is true of different color spaces. Just as with an artist’s palette, most color space models that have been created represent only a portion of what we can actually see. For example, the human eye and brain can see millions of colors and tones. The color space that most closely represents this is called LAB color space. Among other things, different color spaces can be collected into libraries. Each color space has its strengths and weaknesses and so is used in turn for a specific purpose. The most commonly used color space on the Internet, and in many displays, is sRGB, which can only provide 256 tones in each channel of red, green, and blue. It works just fine on the computer displays most people see every day. The sRGB color space is limited; it can’t handle many of the colors that can be printed using an ordinary four-color printing press or by many digital inkjet printers. These four-color printing machines commonly use what is called CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) inks, which are combined into a range of colors; digital inkjet printers intended for printing photographs typically have at least six colors of ink, which can be combined in printing an even broader range of colors than CMYK. Another important color space is Adobe RGB (1998), which is designed among other things to incorporate most of the colors that can be printed via CMYK (see Figure 2.3). In the past, most digital cameras used sRGB; now an increasing number of models provide sRGB and Adobe RGB (1998). This makes Adobe RGB (1998) one of the better choices for photographers. Film Capture In the case of film, layers of light-sensitive materials each respond in their unique way to exposure to varying colors and intensities of light. Some films record only black and white tones, others color. Some films render color as closely to human vision as possible, and others emphasize certain colors to make the final image more pleasing or unusual. Figure 2.4 shows a schematic cross-section of modern camera film. One of the important differences between film products is the way they interpret, sometimes called render, the light they are exposed to. Many films have a distinctive rendering or interpretation of color combinations in a scene, and this is one reason a photographer might choose one type of film over another. Figure 2.3 This figure compares the coverage of sRGB to Adobe RGB (1998). Notice how the sRGB color space (defined by the dark line) is more limited than Adobe RGB (1998). Figure 2.4 Modern film is made up of a number of light-sensitive layers, sandwiched together to make up the film. Each layer is designed to record a specific portion of the color and light intensity of the exposure. (Courtesy Fujifilm) Interestingly, images captured on film may again be altered when the latent image is developed, for example, when the film is placed in a chemical solution that causes the image to become visible to us. And it may be altered again when the image is projected onto light sensitive paper and run through another set of chemicals. Digital Capture A digital camera chip is made up of an array of thousands and thousands of small electronic light sensors (called pixels). Each pixel records varying intensities of light, as illustrated in Figure 2.5. Some of these pixels (sometimes referred to as photosites) are allocated to “see” green, another portion is dedicated to seeing red, and others see blue. Actually, each one “sees” in varying tones of gray—allocated portions of the photosites have red, green, and blue filters over them. They are assigned by the manufacturer to represent red, green, or blue. A color image is created by the camera using a complex set of calculations, using the preset camera hardware (sometimes called firmware) and on-board software to combine the signals from all the photosites. Figure 2.5 A digital sensor’s photosites respond to varying intensities of different colors. Controlling In-Camera Image Processing It’s important to capture images with your digital camera using the highest quality possible. Most mid-level and professional-level digital cameras offer photographers a range of choices in this area. Some of the choices available to you in controlling your digital camera include: • Color saturation • Contrast (sometimes referred to as tone compensation) • Hue • Color space • White balance (also referred to as color temperature) • ISO (digital sensor sensitivity, very similar to film speed) • Sharpening • File quality It is a matter of basic principle to me to keep my options open when creating an image. What I mean by this is that I would rather choose camera options that give me the greatest flexibility down the road in regard to image editing and creativity. In a way, this is one of the areas where digital capture potentially gives photographers flexibility beyond what film can offer. . On the other hand, most digital cameras come out of the box programmed to process images fairly aggressively. This means that the program in the camera applies liberal amounts of color saturation, contrast, and other modifications to the image file. As an example, a pro-level digital camera that I purchased earlier this year came out of the box programmed like this: • Mid-range contrast • Mid-range saturation and hue adjustment • sRGB color space • Auto-ISO • Mid-range sharpening • Auto white balance • Saved images in JPEG file format Now here’s the problem: The camera was set up to take good, but not necessarily great, images most of the time. It plays it safe in many ways, combining auto-exposure and processing to make the images pleasing at first glance. It uses a relatively limited color space, automatic white balance, and saves the image in a JPEG format. So the first thing I do when I take a new camera out of the box is to put the bat-tery in, mount a lens on it, take a few test shots, and examine the images. (Being a typical photographer, I only read the manual if I’m desperate.) If the camera works, I change some of the more important camera settings: • Adobe RGB (1998) color space • Manual ISO (refers to film speed or digital sensor sensitivity) • White balance preset, or manual • Low in-camera sharpening • RAW file format Use this Link To Continue Reading Excerpts From Mastering Digital Color for Photographers and Artists...

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