Mood & Color
Create different looks using colour and power of editing.
Color is one of the major factors in visual arts that binds a story together and brings in visual interest.
its always the best to look at simple examples.
Here, the above image looks flat and doesn’t say any story even though the colors are truest to nature. The photo below, on the other hand, with the enhancement of green and addition of blue tinge, creating more depth through shadows and light, says a moody and bright story and is much visually appealing.
What changes with playing with color?
Color theories have been existent forever! But then it can get confusing for one who’s trying to learn it to get the best results.
Let’s for once forget theory! Focus on your own thoughts and feelings when you look at photos, movies, short videos, paintings, any other visual form of art. Don’t think too much! It kills focus on your emotion.
Take a magazine for example, flip through pages and take only 10 seconds on each photo. Feel it, flip it! Once you finish the book, flip through again to the photos that made an impact to your eyes and brain. Look at those images again and analyse what evoked in that photo to you! You may come up with x pointers but maybe one of the major factors could be the colors in the photos that created that impact.
Once you pick what you like, try taking a simple subject and photograph it inspired by the look, feel, colors and tones you saw in the inspiration.
Once you edit your photo in Lightroom, and you are satisfied with the photo, let your photo sit for few days.
Come back to the same photo after few days. Maybe this time you look at the photo differently and might want to change colors to change the mood.
Adobe Lightroom is really where this magic happens! Ofcourse there’s tons of other softwares you can edit colors in umpteen number of ways but I always prefer Lightroom for its versatility to be able to club with other Adobe editing platforms!
The video above let’s you take the easiest tutorial as to how to change the colors using the Color Range tab in the Masking tool.
Once you know this drill, it’s all on how you put this knowledge to practice! Also, a key note here is that the editing process is at its best with Raw photos! This tool may not work its magic with Jpg or any other formats that doesn’t have maximum full photo info.
In times of content creation being a time concern, why wouldn’t you try reworking on photos that you already have in your archive or in your memory card, give it a twist of color and create moods that you once didn’t even think about?!
This also helps when you have the perfect shot but maybe your client demands a color change for your backdrop! (Nightmare not anymore)
Hope you found this simple technique, helpful.
If you did, I’d love to hear from you once you try.
Happy Creating!
PS: Always keep in mind that you are the master of your own art! There’s never a right or wrong!
