Digital Photography and Imaging | Week 7

4/10/2021 | Week 7

Shofwa Alyadiena / 0350019

Digital Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

 Lecture 

The lecture provided for week 7 was regarding Color Theory. Color theory explains how certain pairs of colors match and create different meanings. Before further explanations, there are two color bases. RGB is the color base for screens, while CMYK is the color base for printing.

RGB stands for red, green, and blue. CMYK stands for the colors cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. However, black is represented by the letter 'K' for two reasons; letter 'b' is taken by blue, and black is the 'key' color for printing. When put aside each other it's almost as if the two color bases are inversions of one another, as seen in figure 1.1.

Fig. 1.1 RGB vs CMYK

What I mean by inversion is that RGB progresses from red, green, and blue to cyan, magenta, and yellow to white, while CMYK progresses from cyan, magenta, and yellow to red, green, and blue to black.

Moving on, there are six different color harmonies; monochromatic, analogous, complementary, split-complementary, triadic, and tetradic. 

Fig. 1.2 Color Harmonies

Each color harmony creates different expressions. For example the complementary color harmony, which has the most contrast and feels dynamic as opposed to monochromatic or analogous that has a sense of togetherness.

 Project 2A: Photo Recoloring 2 

 A. Mandatory Photo Recolor 

Fig. 2.1 Placing References and Original Image (6/10/2021)

Following the tutorial, I placed the references down in Photoshop. I didn't think it was necessary to crop the images so I skipped over that step and moved on immediately to eye-dropping the colors.

Fig. 2.2 Using Eyedropper to Create Palette (6/10/2021)

To create the color palette I used the rectangle tool and colored it with the help of the eyedropper tool. I also picked up the blush and lip colors of the first reference. I placed them in opposite sides of the page to keep my focus centered on the important subject.

 (a) base                                                               (b) Shadows 

 (c) Blush                                                          (d) Max Opacity

Fig. 2.3 Skin Progress (6/10/2021)

At this point I skipped over the tutorial and felt more comfortable sticking to the brush tool instead of layer masking after a quick selection tool mask. I lowered the layer opacity and colored from the base, then adding shadows, and blush right after. I maxed the opacity and applied the layer blending mode.

Fig. 2.4 Applying Overlay (6/10/2021)

Once that was taken care of, I dealt with the hair color. It was harder to select the smaller strands this time so i stuck with the tutorial and used quick selection to help with that problem. I created a new layer with the mask selection and a new solid color layer, then placed the mask on that color layer.

Fig. 2.5 Hair Progress (6/10/2021)

To recap a little bit, I used the mid-tone color for the hair. I wanted to adjust the coloring after it was masked so I applied the mask to the solid color layer. I then applied the layer blending mode which is 'soft light'.

Fig. 2.6 Applying Soft Light (6/10/2021)

I adjusted the hair color and used the smudge tool to nudge some of the colors that were outside the border. I then added the color of the lips, teeth, eyes, fur coat and felt that it was enough. However, I realized that the skin tone felt much too bright, and I acted on my own and added a filter layer to experiment with it.

Fig. 2.7 Adjusting Skin Brightness and Hues (6/10/2021)

I took a step back to see what's missing or what I feel should be changed. I saw that I haven't yet colored the earrings and felt that gold was a suitable color.

Fig. 2.8 Earring Close-Up (6/10/2021)

Fig. 2.9 Original vs Recolored Version (6/10/2021)

The final step was to choose a background. I went with the color orange as it helped bring out the warmth in the skin color.

 A. Photo Recolor from My Choice 

I had a hard time choosing what photo I wanted to recolor at first, and as I saw one I liked I immediately wanted to recolor it. After searching who it was, I found that it was a black and white photo of Willow Smith, and grabbed references that weren't greatly altered by lighting. I found two references, which is linked here and here.

Fig. 3.1 Placing References (7/10/2021)

The steps taken is very similar to that of the first photo recolor this week, though this time I cropped the images as the subject was small and "far away". I placed the rectangles like before and colored them in by eye-dropping from the reference pictures.

Fig. 3.2 Matching Colors with Eyedropper (7/10/2021)

I placed the rectangles where I wanted to take the color from and made sure it matched, and if not then I have to fix that. Luckily, no issues were faced. 

Fig. 3.3 Color Palettes (7/10/2021)

I organized the colored rectangles close to one another to create a color palette. So it doesn't disturb the main focus of the image for me, I pushed them onto the top left corner.

Fig. 3.4 Skin (Overlay) (7/10/2021)

I forgot to take progress pictures at this point, but the steps I took for the skin and hair is by using the quick selection tool to apply a layer mask to a solid color layer. Above and below are the layers. Figure 3.4 shows the image with only skin color applied.

Fig. 3.5 Hair (Soft Light) (7/9/2021)

On top of the skin color layer, the hair color uses the soft light blending mode. From here onwards I stopped using the masking technique and reverted to the brush tool and colored the rest manually until I had to color the background.

Fig. 3.6 Eyes, Lips, Teeth, piercings (7/10/2021)

Still using the color palettes, I manually colored in the eyes, lips, and teeth, then the piercings.

Fig. 3.7 Background (7/10/2021)

For the background, I used the mask selections for the hair and skin then merged them. After merging, I added more to the selection; the shirt, eyes and lips. Once that's done, I inverted the mask and applied it to a solid blue color layer.

Fig. 3.8 Original vs Recolored Version (7/10/2021)

Here is the comparison of before and after the recolor.