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Boring, Ugly Color Grads
Lets talk about grads and photoshop and post-production. Here's what I've been thinking lately. Any thoughts? ----------- EDIT: This thread is about taking control of your grads - adding something to the middle - and not just letting interpolation from one RGB triple to another get you there. Sep 07 08 06:22 pm Link   You can see here how the brighter the blue light gets the more it shifts into cyan.  You can see this bright light fade to black through different hues - yellows and oranges and reds.  A simple photoshop yellow grad that just drops luminosity on the same hue is usually ugly.  And a yellow-blue digital grad that isn't helped along the way to go through other hues looks flat. Sep 07 08 06:22 pm Link  A boost of saturation in the middle of a grad http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm And when you think about it, it makes sense. Our eyes fail to see saturation in dark shadows, and bright highlights burn out color, too, so the saturation should be greatest in the mid tones. Sep 07 08 06:25 pm Link  I've been feeling lately that a simple black-gray-white Photoshop layer mask is not a great way to blend two things, because it doesn't allow a yellow-blue blend to get green in the middle, nor does it allow for a boost of saturation in the middle. I guess even a simple layer mask blend needs to be dragged out into more steps. Sep 07 08 06:31 pm Link this is fun--i'm reading the rest of it. Sep 07 08 06:35 pm Link this is fun--i'm reading the rest of it. Sep 07 08 06:35 pm Link   Not bad, but I believe it could be better with more attention paid to the grad. http://www.photoshoplab.com/the-elegant … -shot.html Sep 07 08 06:46 pm Link :: thousand mile stare :: Sep 07 08 06:55 pm Link beyond me. Sep 07 08 06:56 pm Link i think i'm just zonked this weekend i'm sure one of these days i'll be working on a grad problem and be like "OH!!!" and will rush to the forums to find this thread.  Sep 07 08 07:10 pm Link digital Artform wrote: I remember you talking about adding new hues to gradients in relation to one of my photos- this explanation is even more illuminating. I'm very curious to see how one would apply the concept to layer masks. Sep 07 08 07:52 pm Link Michael Bonner wrote: Yes, I noticed you were already making some very nice grads. Sep 07 08 08:00 pm Link There is a trick for grabbing just the middle of a grad - the grays  Start with a grad (or in this case, blur something sharp)  Invert it in a second layer, and multiply it by the uninverted image.  Brighten as needed. http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/ … n_out.html Sep 07 08 08:03 pm Link I should add that the above method for pulling the middle out of a grad is pretty old-school. The only advantage to the technique being that sandwiching a grad and its negative also works in the real world with grads on film, like on an optical printer. In Photoshop you can also just turn your slanted line in 'Curves' into an inverted V (or U) Sep 07 08 08:34 pm Link Excellent post sir excellent! Sep 07 08 08:46 pm Link digital Artform wrote: Great idea! I will definately keep this in mind for the future. Sep 07 08 09:11 pm Link LeWhite wrote:
Sep 07 08 10:56 pm Link digital Artform wrote: Interesting! Thanks for posting! Sep 07 08 11:40 pm Link Monad Studios wrote: Good question; not that I know of Sep 07 08 11:44 pm Link digital Artform wrote: I'm lost. When did color theory change to the idea that yellow into blue, or blue into yellow turns to green in the center of the process? If the colors were yellow into cyan, or cyan into yellow there would be green in there. Sep 08 08 02:40 am Link Tim Summa wrote: That's fine for scientists. Sep 08 08 02:42 am Link Tim Summa wrote: that 1st grad has a blue that is more purple than it is "true blue" therefore it has magenta and is neutralizing (becoming tertiary) when you mix it with yellow. Sep 08 08 02:48 am Link digital Artform wrote: This thread is about taking control of your grads - adding something to the middle - and not just letting interpolation from one RGB triple to another get you there. Sep 08 08 02:52 am Link We accept the bright blue light in the crystal shifting into cyan in the photograph above. And in the other photo we accept the yellow around the sun falling off through orange and red into dark red and on into black. But when we make a yellow grad falling off to black on our own in Photoshop we rarely add the oranges and reds. And when we make a cyan falling off to black we rarely add the blues. Sep 08 08 03:11 am Link ummm.....err.....ah... ahem....yeah, what he said....yeah, yeah...... This is why I come here....to learn. Sep 08 08 04:33 am Link fbimagery wrote: I guess that's about it. Sep 08 08 05:00 pm Link digital Artform wrote:
Sep 15 08 04:58 am Link digital Artform wrote: Interesting, I didn't think about that but it DOES make sense. Sep 23 08 07:26 pm Link netmodel wrote: The bright light tends to desaturate color. (it 'washes out) Sep 23 08 07:40 pm Link I had this in a thread on vignetting, but it applies here... -------------- photo on left by by G Dan Mitchell  Real Vignetting The pale blue sky becomes a deeper, richer, more saturated blue as it darkens. Post Vignetting The usual recipe, a soft fade to black, just drops the luminosity and grays down the color.  Nov 27 08 03:13 pm Link  http://www.houseind.com/showandtell/ This photo caught my eye recently. It's interesting how in a real lens blur the soft region between the letters and the background picked up an intermediate color. Jan 17 09 10:38 am Link  A digital lens blur doesn't create the same color transition. It looks duller. Jan 18 09 09:35 am Link digital Artform wrote: Can you make a gradient paint brush ? Jan 18 09 10:38 am Link I think the yellow to blue transition is very interesting, and am wondering where it'd be useful in the "real" world of editing.... I've done similar on skin before, when the skin was inconsistent in color... I went ahead and turned the skin black and white, then applied a gradient to it to get a more uniform skin tone... is that something similar? Jan 18 09 10:46 am Link Digital Soup wrote: Kinda, you need to create a new canvas then do a gradiated fill in black to white, then define as a brush. Then you can get a simulated gradient. That's the only way I can think of doing one. Jan 18 09 11:56 am Link digital Artform wrote: That looks like you made a gradient paint brush? Eszplain how rikki Jan 18 09 12:09 pm Link Digital Soup wrote: No, it's just a normal hard-eded brush with opacity set to pen pressure. Jan 18 09 12:11 pm Link   Jan 18 09 12:13 pm Link digital Artform wrote: Thank you sir photoshop now has an upgrade? Lets see if they will figure it out. Jan 18 09 12:17 pm Link I'm not adept at applying hue shifts and all in photoshop.. is there a tutorial for this technique somewhere? 50409 wrote: Jun 16 09 06:28 pm Link |
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