The Online Photographer

Wow, Mike. How many cans of worms do you have stocked on your editorial shelves, anyway? This is a good one. I think it's funny how many people know all they want to know about color and about color in photography and art, and curious that T.O.P.'s "resident" expert on color printing and photography has not weighed in by now.

Many many photographers don't understand a lick about how to actually use color in their images. I mean...they don't put it to good use as a compositional, formal, metaphorical or symbolic element. Other stuff too! Pumping up color may make them think that the color is, or, has become important. It's usually just annoying.

Of course, pumped up color will sell posters and cause your Aunty to orgasm. That's a valid response but I'm generally looking for more in an image and most times that token saturation causes me to stop before I reach the meat. I'm a frigging snob and the world is being slammed with oversaturated images. After a while it's tedious and becomes a major distraction in a photo. It has created an almost insurmountable dumbing down in terms of the way people look at photographs.

Now, I will type "2zabp" and this post will appear a short time after Mike wakes up from dozing on his keyboard.

Photogaphy is dead! Long live Al Green!!!

This is an area in which if you pick a fight, you are bound to lose. Folks will just think you are an old crank for thinking that a world with colors somewhat related to planet earth is preferable to a neon world.

It is the same in Japan. I watch a lot of nature shows on digital TV and the picture is so obviously over-saturated as to look---as one poster mentioned---cartoonish. That world does not exist. It is not nature---nor in my opinon does it represent nature---any more than a Bambi cartoon. I guess it's no surprise. The French movie a few years ago about talking penguins in which one could hardly hear any of the sounds of nature---March of the Penguin?---was a big hit.

Ads, posters, nearly everything is saturated to the point of absurdity. It is no surprise that people over-saturate photos. The Flicker/photoSIG sites, are as mentioned a good example. Put a color photo up with reasonably close to normal saturation and later another of over-saturated colors and see what happens as far as comments and "invites" go.

I especially love the near lime-green foliage I see sometimes. Sorta causes nausea,but I guess that's because I am becoming an old crank too.

Paul Mc Cann: "I think the people who picky picky at image detail have little real interest in the aesthetics of the actual image."

Ain't THAT the truth! I've never understood those who nitpick on different lenses, spend thousands on Zeiss optics only to have to grind their 5D mirror (so it will clear the lens), and have to use their 5D in full manual mode all of the time, just because they reckon that their lens is sharper than my 35mm f/1.4 L. Come on! If my images are so poor that you can notice their other deficiencies so readily, then I have other things to worry about than lens sharpness!

The flipside? I've noticed that those who do worry about those things have a completely different sense of "art" than me. Enough said! :-)

"For the record, I'll concede that the two example pictures are *both* exaggerated to heighten the difference between them. They're just illustrations."

I'm glad you said this, Mike. In the middle of this is fascinating big conversation, I hate to nitpick about those two photographs. But something rides on it, I think, so I will nitpick.

First, it seems to me that there are at least four separate easy adjustments you could have made to get from the first photo to the second: increase contrast, increase saturation, change white balance/color temperature, and (over)sharpen. You did something like all four, and it's misleading to lump them all under the question of "color accuracy", much less color accuracy of the camera that took the image. Saturation is only part of it. The main color correction (minus the saturation and contrast adjustments) looks something like the change you get (though more extreme) when you choose the "cloudy" white balance shortcut on my Nikon DSLR when shooting in shade. The illumination in shade tends toward the blue of end of things, as color slide films capture, sometimes frustratingly so.

Second, the pictures don't illustrate the color accuracy of cameras directly at all. Either the first image is from a digital camera or it is a scan. If it's from a digital, it proves digital cameras can satisfy Mike's need for color accuracy. If it's not, then the second image is a doctored film image, not a digital capture, and again, no comment on the color accuracy of digital cameras.

I realize these are less ambitious observations than many here, but I kept hitting my head up against these facts, which seem relevant to the speed with which we arrive at big conclusions.

Great discussion.

ajh

Here's my two cents' worth: I think we need to be careful not to make value judgments based on how accurate or inaccurate the color (or lack of color) appears in a photograph. Photographers should have the artistic license to make their photos look however they want. I in turn have the freedom to decide whether I like the results.

That said, it's still important that a camera be able to reproduce certain colors accurately or within a certain tolerance, otherwise there's no way to ensure calibration and consistency from one camera to the next. It's one thing to exaggerate colors that are basically accurate. It's quite another to produce colors that have no relationship at all to reality as we see it (color infrared, for example). Where we tend to disagree is the point as which "slight exaggeration" becomes an outright lie.

Finally, keep in mind that color accuracy is essential in catalog photography and art reproduction. Photographers, printers and their clients go to great lengths to ensure that the reproduction is as close as possible to the original. Which brings us back to what I think was Mike's original point: Regardless of whether you like to change the colors to your liking, isn't base color accuracy at least as important as signal-to-noise ratio, resolution, pixel count and other measurements?

Reality? About a week ago my lawn looked pale and yellow-green at mid-day. So my husband "Photoshopped" it; that is, he sprayed on some nitrogen and iron. So now, at mid-day, it's a saturated "Velvia" green. A photo of that lawn taken at either time could be equally "accurate" but vastly different.

Isn't it human nature to improve or alter whatever we can?

Easy way to get rid of **neon green foliage**

Photoshop, Hue/Saturation .. pick yellows: crank it down -5 to -20. Cartoon trees are gone and Earth trees are back! Of course if you have a person in the foreground... this may not work so swell without masking :)

I find the Flickr oversaturation and oversharpening trend just as irritating as the almost-muted-but-colour, bland composed, too posed, 8x10 art photo trend (go to Conscientious and click any of the links to see what I mean). It seems that today you're only an artist if you use a 8x10...

Another thought:
Any person whose portrait is made in mostly open shade and printed with "accurate colors" would look like a corpse in the print.

If I'm working with images of people, I don't care much for "accurate color" I just want "pleasing color".

Hi great picture, you cant beat photoshop

Regards

Colin

Guilty! guilty! My defence is that I live on an island in the middle of the southpacific and I too wear polarised sunglasses. I just feel that I have to bump the sat so it looks like the way I see the world (blame rayban P's). But I did make a comment recently on a post on my own blog that the grass looked too green and that's what it was actually like. So maybe there's hope for me yet...