Tag Archive for: color

Calibrations demystified

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Calibrations are essential and easy

Let’s first take a look at what a calibration is.
I’m writing this blogpost in English.
I chose English because I know that most people in the world understand English better than Dutch. And the fact I don’t speak any languages as good as Dutch and English.

So because I’m writing this in English everyone reading this understands me.
And this is because we use rules and letters in combinations that we agreed upon as the English language.

And with calibrations it’s the same.
We have many different devices ranging from your camera, to your printer, monitor and scanner.
Some devices are capture devices, some are output devices, but they all use different techniques, and still you want your images to look exactly the same on all devices right?

Luckily there is a solution for this.

Home Theater

When we look at the home theater market calibrations are done to get the optimal image quality out of your tv or projector setup. During these calibrations high-end calibration devices and software are used costing thousands of dollars, and in most cases there is no auto-mode 😀

Now you might wonder, “what is optimal image quality?”
Is this “max light output?”, “the best colors?”
And what is best, or max?

Well luckily there are rules for this.
For most TVs and projectors we use the REC709 colourspace for SDR material (normal HD material) and BT2020 or P3 for the new HDR material.
For the correct colors in the ISF (Imaging Science Foundation) setup we use the D6500 standard.

During a calibration for a tv or projector we look at the following settings.
User settings like Contrast and Brightness to set the perfect dynamic range.
Grayscale for the correct color temperature
CMS (Color Management System) for the correct colors per colourspace.
Gamma for the brightness curve
Extra features like sharpness, iris, motion flow etc.

Because the same rules the calibration follows is also followed by everyone that makes professional movies we can now see the movie exactly as the director intended on our projectors or TVs. And we all know that color evokes emotion, so seeing the correct colors and colortone can have a huge impact on the movie experience.

For Photography and video

Now for Home Theater the process can be complicated and you need to know what you’re doing (I’ve been doing it since 2001 and still have to learn every new format and display) but the workflow is very basic and simple. We just follow what the movie industry follows. For photography it’s the other way around almost.

For photography the process itself is super simple but we have a lot of different devices and things we have to take care off to get it all working together.
So lets take a look at what we can encounter.

First off we have the input devices

Cameras, scanners etc are input devices. This means we have a file that has to be used as our reference file.
One of the tools that’s essential for a fast calibration is the Calibrate Colorchecker passport.
The process is very simple, you just shoot the colorchecker with proper lighting (use a lightmeter) and you can use the included Lightroom plugin or the standalone version.

Now we have to make sure we follow the workflow
After you restart Lightroom you select the colorchecker profile you created from the custom profiles and sync this to the rest of the images you shot with this setup. And indeed when you use the colorchecker with your camera it’s highly recommended to shoot a new colorchecker image with every change in your setup. If you are not incredibly critical you can also create one profile for your camera/strobe combination. It will not be 100% correct but it will be close.

One thing I always do is when I select the profile from the menu you see here, just before syncing I’ll do a quick colorbalance with the colorbalance tool in Lightroom.

Now lets look at the output devices

Output devices can be for example a monitor or printer.
Now we already looked at the colorchecker for the input devices and believe it or not for the output devices we use a similar technique with one difference, now we need a device to meter what the monitor or printer outputs.

I personally really like the Calibrite products due to their ease of use and quality, plus they work with the hardware calibrations on the BenQ monitors I use.
But you can also use other brands of course, just make sure you replace your analyser every few years because they will deteriorate over time.

For the printer we need a so called spectroradiometer and for the monitor we can use the same technique but also a much cheaper solution like for example tristimuls meters. But without getting to technical.

The calibration is very simple.
I’ll walk you through the more advanced version.

You start the software.
Use the following settings:
Color Temp D6500 (some setups depend on D54 but you will know if that’s you)
Gamma 2.2 (2.4) depending on your preference and room.
Lightoutput 110-130cdm depending on your ambient light conditions.
Profile V2

These are the settings you will find in almost all software, and will give you a perfectly calibrated screen.
Now the software will ask you to activate this profile and send you a reminder after X weeks, please don’t ignore that because calibrations do change over time. After you activate the calibration you’re done.

Different profiles, so now what?

By now we have created several profiles.
The colorchecker creates both DCP (Adobe) and ICC profiles.
The monitor calibration creates an ICC profile etc.
But luckily we don’t have to worry about them anymore. The profiles are now exactly where they should be. In the operating system for the monitor and in Lightroom for your camera where you can now select it and sync to the photos shot with that combination.

Why do I mention this?
A lot of people ask me which profile to use when opening files in Photoshop from Lightroom, the monitor profile or the camera profile?
Well both are wrong, how weird it might sound, you can’t use any of them.

When you open up a file in Photoshop you should always select the colourspace that you want to work in, being sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProphotoRGB.
If your monitor is capable of showing 99% AdobeRGB, thanks to the calibration you will now see all the colors as close to accurate as possible, but also when you have to work in another colourspace the monitor and calibration will make sure you are still seeing the correct colors.

Some things to make sure are in place

For a correct and easy workflow there are some things you have to take care off.
When using HDMI make sure your monitor is setup for 0-255 as dynamic range. (16-235 is for video)
Make sure there is no light hitting your monitor, BenQ delivers a nice hood with most of their photography monitors and these can make a huge difference.
As mentioned before a color analyser deteriorates over time, so make sure to replace it every once in a while. The same goes for the colorchecker, and for the colorchecker you can extend it’s life a lot by keeping it out of the sun when not using.

 

This is one part in the series on calibration and colorprofiles, make sure to check the blog for much more.
If you’re in the market for a new monitor, we have some 10% discount codes for BenQ monitors for European customers, mail us for more information.

 

 

Combining 3 gels for awesome results and even white light

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Colors can be mixed, Color Manipulation part 2

In the previous blog post you could see that colors are all connected.
So today we are going to play with this.

Additive and Subtractive colors

Often this leads to a lot of confusion about what primary and secondary colors are.
For photography and video we are using Red Green and Blue to create the color we see.
A printer uses CMYK to print the colors we see.

These are two different ways of working with colors we call those additive and subtractive.
Additive colour is created by mixing light. Subtractive colour is created by mixing materials.

For today we are going to work with 3 colors Red, Green and Blue.

And I mean that literally

When we combine a Red, Green and Blue gel and aim it at a subject we will get an awesome effect.
You will see a mix of the colors in the shadows, but the fun thing is that where all 2 colors overlap you get a “white” light.
This is how gels actually work, so you can create some truly stunning shots with this.

In this setup I’m using three strobes with gels.
Let’s first take a look how it looks without green.

As you can see it doesn’t really look right. There is a harsh shadow line and it doesn’t really pop.
So let’s throw in the green.
The green strobe is aimed directly on the model, while the red and blue are coming from the sides.

Now let’s start to play a bit with poses but more importantly our own position.

As you can see by changing the angle under which the model poses and where you shoot from you can play with the colors and get very different results.
This is without a doubt a very creative solution, but… do remember this is not something you shoot for a client without showing the result before hand, I love it, but it’s not for everyone 😀

An extra tip

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me this contains a lightmeter and colorchecker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the colorchecker I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

On the side of the monitor I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great line up of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colourspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality most BenQ’s also support hardware calibration. Which means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European vistors, please contact me for more info.

Working with colors and gels is fun

/in , /by

Colors evoke emotion

Today is the first blog post in a series about color and color manipulation in photography.
We are going to talk about color theory, how to manipulate colors, and how to use gels in a super creative way.
So keep coming back and subscribe to the blog. This part I

Color manipulation

Colors are all around us and are for a large part responsible for how we experience a product or scene.
Think about the movie Titanic in normal colors, instead of the fitting brownish tint.
Or how about the tinting used in The Matrix where green was used inside the Matrix?

Now think about this.
When you are 5 miles below sea level in a concrete bunker,  you turn on the light.
What color is that light?

Most people will answer Blue or are in doubt.
In essence, you don’t have to doubt, you are in a concrete bunker so the light is… well just the same color/temperature as it would be above water.
So why is the Abyss, and almost every underwater movie filtered blue?

Easy to explain, we immediately get a feeling that we are indeed underwater.
And you probably also feel cold 😀

Colors evoke emotion.

Learned or emotional

Now the following is not scientific (I guess) but I use it all the time during workshops.
When we talk about colors and emotion we can expect the following.

Red

Hate, warmth, love, warm, cozy, danger, etc.
The funny and interesting thing is that Red covers both emotions that trigger us, hate and love.

Blue
Cool, distant, uncertain, future, empty, sterile

Green
Now with green, I have to be honest that I don’t have a real emotion.
Of course, we have associations like envy or nature and some people will say calm.

Red is special

This is also why I love using the color red in my photography.
And you can even find it back in our logo. It’s a color that is very versatile.

 

Today we take a look at some images we took from Lois during a recent workshop where I’m using a blue gel as an accent light

 

As you can see I’m using “normal” white light as my main light and as an accent I’m using a Rogue Blue gel on our magnetic system.
The advantage of these gels is that they are thick and give a beautiful deep saturated color, which makes the trick I’m using a lot easier.

Which trick?

When we look at the color triangle we see the colors Red, Green, and Blue.
And in the middle we see the so-called black body curve.
This is where the “white points” are located, a lower color temperature is a warmer white, and a higher color temperature means a more blue color tint.
For calibrations, we use D65 for most photography/video applications.

color manipulation

Just for fun. When you draw a line from the primary color (RGB) through the white point you end up on your secondary color (CMY).
You often see CMYK and K is actually the Key of that color, meaning the brightness, in printers, this often means a Black module, but the K is actually called Key.

By knowing how colors interact we can do some really cool things.
Today I’m showing you something really easy that you can do yourself.

Use one light source with white light and one accent color preferably blue or red.
Now the only thing you have to do is change the color balance in your RAW convertor and you can get some really funky effects like these below.

Because you are using white light and a deep blue you can create a beautiful mix. But if your client doesn’t like the “cool” look you can always go back. This is not possible when shooting with 2 gels.

Color Manipulation color manipulation

An extra tip for color manipulation

As you have read Key is the luminance of a color.
This means that if you don’t have a correct exposure of your shot the colors will not look accurate.
Now of course sometimes you want a more moody look, but it’s important to understand the basis of color to be able to manipulate them the way you want.

Must-have for color manipulation is the right gear

To be able to judge your colors correctly you need a proper workflow.
For me, this contains a light meter and color checker.
This means I get my exposure correct and with the color checker, I can create a profile and white balance for that series.
And do remember this is just to get all the images looking the same so that all the presets you run or anything else in your workflow has an expected outcome.

BenQ

On the side of the monitor, I’ve been using BenQ monitors for years and can highly recommend them.
They have a great lineup of professional monitors and a great line of P3 colorspace monitors (in between sRGB and Adobe RGB) for very affordable prices.
Besides great quality, most BenQs also support hardware calibration. This means you don’t calibrate your operating system but straight into the monitor.
This is a much better way of calibrating your screen than via standalone software and of course, the software is delivered for free.
We have a few 10% discount codes for our European visitors, please contact me for more info.

 

Check this link for part II about Color Manipulation

In our latest video: Inside the Model Shoot we also work with colors and manipulate them

 

 

What happens when you change it to Black and White?

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What happens if you change your photo to Black and White?

The choice between black and white, or color can be tricky.
For me personally I sometimes shoot something with the intent to make it black and white. But then when I see the results I often keep it in color, because I just love the way it looks. And what happens if you change your photo to Black and White?

Sometimes you might shoot something that is very colorful and you don’t even think about black and white. That’s why I post this today.  Luckily with digital, we can of course do both 😀

The horror clown is back!

Well she was here just 2 days ago, so she was not really gone 😀
But as you could have seen in the previous blog post about the horror clown, the color was pretty colorful. So this is the kind of set where you might not immediately think about a black-and-white conversion, but…. think about this.

Black and white doesn’t just mean we take out the color.

In fact, you can still manipulate the colors via the H(S)L adjustments in Lightroom. A bit like in the old days photographers did with filters. We can now manipulate images to our hearts’ content in our RAW convertor.

The idea of black and white in this setting is not to take out color but to inject a lot of mood and make the images more creepy. And that’s the cool thing about black and white. I sometimes make the joke

“if you mess up a shot, add a lot of contrast and noise, make it black and white, and voila instant art”

It sounds weird, but it’s really true.
If we look at a color image that is just slightly out of focus or has a shadow that’s not 100% correct in color we immediately see this as “bad”. But make it black and white and we see it as mood, or we don’t even notice it. Now that doesn’t mean that all my images that are black and white are “bad” images of course. But some street photography images have been “saved” that way in the past 😀

But let’s first take a look at the original blog post about the horror clown.
Now that you have seen the color versions, let’s go to black and white.

change your picture into black and white change your photo to black and white change your image into black and white

As you can see the images get a totally different vibe and look.
For me even more creepy than the color versions.

Learning all about lighting in our workshops

For me teaching the workshops is not all about lighting.
Personally, I think there is a lot more than just lighting or a cool/fitting backdrop.
A good photo is a cooperation between the model and the photographer. So coaching and making a model feel at ease is vital. But after that, the real creativity comes into play, and during the workshops, I try to focus at least 80% on creativity.

This can be with lighting, but also with the storytelling part.

As mentioned in the previous blog post, working in “super creativity” model can enhance your skills way above the level you would achieve if you only shoot what you are hired for. Plus if you can shoot images that your client is not used from you it could very well be that he/she asks for something a bit more creative.

Visit www.frankdoorhof.com and www.photography-workshops.eu for the workshops in Dutch and English.