Adusting Color and Tone in an image can be an important step in realizing the vision you have for your image. Gradient Maps can be a quick and easy way to add color to an image. Play around with it and see what results you can get.
In my very first blog post on this blog, about five weeks ago I mentioned an idea I had kicking around, about taking a picture showing someone removing a neutral face mask to reveal a more authentic expression on a face below. This is the final image from that idea.
How it came to be:
Shooting this was pretty simple. I knew I wanted a lot of detail in the shadow areas, so I used a ring flash at low power to get some light into all parts of the image. A high powered beauty dish above the subject and camera allowed me to really sculpt with light while not worrying about the shadows since the ring was taking care of those areas. Two rimlights to push in those dynamic edges, each one in a 24″ softbox, and one gridded light on the background to get a gradient happening back there. So your basic 5 light setup, with the rimlights at a fairly low power to accent things without overwhelming them. Medium depth of field (I think this was at f5.6 or so) in order to have a lot of detail to work with in editing.
Compositing things together was more difficult. I had shot two images, one with my looking up for the “mask” part, and the other with me holding a cut up paper plate over my head, to get the hand angle right and cast the appropriate shadow on my “revealed” face. Most of the tricky parts of compositing involved creating realistically cast shadows on different areas. I wanted to draw attention to the lower face, so I put a bit more contrast on it than on the “mask” face, and did some subtle lighting effects to pull the viewer’s eye to it. The mask face still looked too lively, even with slightly lowered contrast, so I went in and removed the catchlight from it’s eye. That went a long way to making it appear more lifeless and neutral. The last thing I did was add a layer with some smoke on it to the background, which really helped to put this in more of a sci-fi mindset, instead of a more realistic setting.
This is for me a good example of what I want to do more of…. come up with an idea, and then execute it, making decisions along the way based on whether or not the choice supports the main idea or not. I’m pleased with how it came out, and I think it expresses the core concept quite well.
I put together this brief video tutorial demonstrating how to use gradient maps to tone your image and introduce color effects in Photoshop CC. Difficulty level: Super Easy
Turn yourself into an Idea machine instructions:
get a notebook.
start a movie that is not currently popular, but is notable for some quality of excellence.
while you watch the movie, take note of any ideas that you have for creating something.
write the ideas down in the notebook.
write down as many details about the idea as you can.
choose movies that are not currently trendy.
old stuff, from the ’60s or the films that inspired the creative people you look up to.
that way you’ll be encountering ideas that your contemporaries won’t be aware of.
and then write down your ideas that are generated from those references.
some movies that i’ve seen recently that were very idea-stimulating include:
belle du jour, point blank, the birds, wings of desire, holy mountain, enter the void, the bicycle thieves, the tree of life, the fountain, 8 1/2, brazil, city of god, drive, upstream color, and on and on.
so you watch these movies, and you write down all your ideas in your notebook, and later when you need to come up with a concept, you look through the notebook, and you take bits and pieces from this one and that one. maybe combining “shoot a model’s reflection in a broken mirror” with “shoot a landscape in an unusual way” to get a view of a broken cityline.
This is a great way to actively engage in synthesizing new ideas from references.
Mix and match to wind up with new and interesting combinations.
Don’t wait for inspiration to strike…. get out there and hunt that bastard down.
-Tim
Aaron Nace from PHLearn put together a really great video tutorial on recovering detail in shadows and adding a gradient layer. Check his video out: Amazing Trick to Recover Shadow Detail in Photoshop. I use these photoshop techniques all the time, and the best part of this technique is it makes it look like you have a much more expensive camera than you really do (since really expensive cameras are the ones with wider dynamic range). In addition, think about the possibilities of applying this technique to just part of an image… say the background is too dark for your tastes, but the subject looks great…. using shadows/highlights to bring up the background selectively (using a mask or a duplicate layer) can really add a dynamic feel to your shot. Well worth exploring if you want more control over the tonal range of your images.
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