Virtual Graphic Artist Webzine: But I Like It Like That!h

A lesson was learned many years ago after reading a National Geographic magazine article, The Hidden Hills of the Berkshires about the beautiful fall colors signaling the changing of the seasons in Western Massachusetts. Since living there (and still do) it seemed a very interesting topic from the usual foreign and remote subject. The article was fine and quite accurate, but the pictures! Some of them were recognized as places visited and familiar but they certainly did not look like that! In real like they were certainly not that appealing. The colors were really not that bright.

Was this a scam? Why would this highly respected magazine be somewhat unethical about how they portrayed the realities of the locations they visit every month? Since they did this to the Massachusetts Berkshires, wouldn't they routinely do this wherever they go?

This raises a question of ethics that we have to deal with in our pursuit of digital photography. Is it right to artificially alter colors to increase the interest in the articles they are supporting as illustrations? Certainly they made the scenes more appealing and that made the articles more appealing. But why not? We all know that fisherman cannot accurately position the distance between their outstretched hands when describing the length of the fish they caught. It somewhat adds charm to the fisherman's story. Even though it is somewhat deceptive, it really doesn't hurt. And even if the fall colors aren't really that bright and appealing, what difference does it make to our thirst for entertainment and enjoyment?

As technicians and artists we must be concerned about the accurate portrayal of colors for they are a part of the reality of the scene we are photographing. We are communicating with pixels and colors and changing them is similar to changing and editing words, details and facts in a narrative article. It must be done carefully with caution. As authors of the written language take artistic license with their words, we too take artistic license with our pictures. Done with taste and humor (as the National Geographic did) is not a serious ethical problem. Furthermore, our artistic license does require us to present to our viewers the best possible image of a scene. Somewhere between the need for ethical representation and artistic license is how our pictures should be presented.

But we have a serious problem. Our digital cameras, as well as the old traditional chemical film cameras do not always portray the scenes faithfully. Because of hardware limitations they may not be able to give us the most accurate representation of what was seen when looking through the camera. A further problem is that of prevailing lighting conditions. Cloudy days really do not speak well of the natural beauty of the scene and in itself may not be an accurate representation.

The uncorrected and unadjusted picture of a Halloween display is shown at left. This picture (as with many) are intentionally dark to minimize blown highlights. At right, Curves were applied to increase the contrast as well as lighten the highlights and midtones. This alone increased the apparent color saturation, especially in the green grass. As well, some adjustments to colors using Photoshop's Hue, Saturation and Lightness were made. Only Saturation was adjusted increasing the Red and Yellow saturation. Cyan and green were also increased slightly.

The entire concept of Color Correction is actually the contrived process of returning an image to its correct or perceived colorful reality. Well, at least the reality as we think it should be. It is a skillful process that takes a lot of practice and skill to produce the desired objectives. One is that the colors be believable, that anyone looking at them would think that they are accurate to the original scene. Another objective is to take some artistic license and put the colors in that should have been there. Of course, the most talked-about objective of color correction is to fix any color shifts or problems introduced into the image because of the hardware (or chemical film) limitations and inabilities to accurately render the scene.

Two important Photoshop tool used for color correction is Hue-Saturation-Lightness and Curves. They allow you to correct any tonal shifts and alter the concentration of color (known as saturation when adding more color and desaturation when taking it away). With HSL the concentration of colors can be adjusted, either the image as a whole or to fine tune individual colors without making changes to other colors. Cloudy day photos seem to lack the sparkle and brightness because of the lack of sunlight at the scene. HSL will allow you to correct this by artificially increasing the saturation, hopefully to levels that would have been present if it were a bright sunny day. By adjusting individual colors, an image can be made warmer or cooler as desired. A blue sky can be adjusted until the correct tone is achieved without having hardly any effect on the foliage or other images.

Curves is excellent for adjusting the overall contrast of your image making a low contrast (cloudy day) image look as if it were photographed on a sunny day. Flat pictures are simply less appealing that bright contrasty ones (not too much, of course!). On a cloudy day image, curves allows for the gray highlights to be lightened to near-white highlights while gray shadows can be altered into powerful almost black shadows. Color casts can be adjusted bringing the Reds, Greens and Blues back into proper balance. We can even work with problems within an image be it highlights, midtones or shadows without affecting other parts of the image that do not need adjustments.

All this computing power is at our mouse button, available to help us make adjustments in our quest for the perfect picture. We cannot and should not trust the digital camera to accurately render the natural beauty of the scene. Nor should we worry about it for Photoshop (and other programs) give is the opportunity to make the picture we want, not what the camera gives us. It is wonderful power and control but it is also a responsibility.

No discussion of color correcting can be undertaken without exploring the issue of differences in monitors. When producing web graphics we must realize that our viewers will not be seeing the image as we see it on our monitors, they will obviously have their own equipment as their window into the web. There are two major points of discussion. First, we question what it is they are really looking at and, second, we explore our responsibility defining what we must give to them.

This brook scene (original at left) shows how a slight application of HSL will improve the picture considerably. The Reds, Magentas and Yellows were adjusted to restore the brilliant fall foliage colors in the leaves. To fine-tune the water, blue and Cyan were adjusted. Notice that the HSL adjustments do not alter other parts of the picture. The brown-gray white water is not significantly changed to light blue as might happen if the colors were adjusted in Curves.

Your viewer has their own monitor which they are used to. Familiarity with the way the colors are presented to them is daily life and that includes the saturation and brightness of the images. Furthermore, they may actually like it that way making the images more saturated or flatter than the artists intended. This is fine for they do have the right to alter the presentation to suit their own tastes. As artists and technicians we should respect this right and leave them to what it is they wish to look at. Complaining that they do not see what it is we see and somehow think we have to do something about it is purely ridiculous! Your viewer is comfortable with what they see and obviously do not miss what it is they never see.

Or do they. Viewers may not be pleased with the images they see because their hardware is not up to today's technological standards of excellence. Older monitors and limited video cards are a curse that only money can correct and they many be in no position to correct. We would all like 32 bit 21" monitors but reality will prevail before that ever happens. But through their dissatisfaction they do not (and should not) complain about the images we pass on to them. We simply do the best we can and they, unfortunately, will view them in the best way they can.

Why should we alter the images we present to suit inadequate equipment? Why should we alter the colors we present to foresee their equipment's lackings? Changing a 24 bit image to 8 bit for the benefit of those with only 8 bit capabilities does not make sense. Their equipment will automatically change a 24 bit into 8 bits anyway. Those with 24 bit capabilities will now have to suffer with 8 bit images for no practical reason. But those with inadequate equipment will not know the difference because they see 8 bit images all the time and have no idea what a 24 bit image could be like. They are even used to dithering and color shifts and do not know what it is they should be looking at in the first place. A viewer with inadequate equipment really has no concept of what it is they are missing in life!

So what is our responsibility? We should give them images that are contained in a tonal range between highlight and shadow so that a reasonable image can be adjusted on just about anyone's monitor. This is a strictly technical objective and may not even be the best for your own monitor. Consider it an adjustment to a neutral position suitable for all monitors. To do this, make sure that your highlights and shadows are not beyond range where parts of your picture are solid white or black. If they are, they cannot convey any digital information and are useless to any viewer who cannot adjust their monitor to get image out of your picture simply because there is none in the first place!

Photoshop's Curves and HSL can help you produce technically perfect pictures but with misuse they can also produce unusable images. Therefore, care must be exercised as it is all too possible to ruin an image in the quest for beautiful colors and contrast. It is a real difficult task and is not always done successfully. And as many pictures are not quite technically perfect, they are at least conveying almost all the information and are therefore useable and valuable additions to our web pages.

For digital pictures that are destined for printing on offset presses, the color corrector must be aware of the technical requirements of the printing process. This entire discussion, well beyond the scope of this article, places obvious restrictions on the pursuit of beautiful colors. Many of them simply cannot be printed on presses. The retoucher must know this and respect these technical limitations to bringing the best colors to press. It is further most unfortunate that some of the nicest and brightest of colors are usually the ones that presses cannot reproduce! The success is more in how close can you get without losing any to what is often called "out of gamut" colors.

Your challenge as a digital photographer is to make a philosophical decision as to how you intend to adjust your digital pictures. How do you wish to represent colors, super saturated and contrasty or even and non-intimidating? Realistic or surrealistic? How do you plan to deal with the limitations of your camera and image capturing system?

Clouds in the sky give the hint this picture was taken on a cloudy, partly sunny day. Cloudy days seem to lower saturation losing the natural beauty of the scene. Darker exposures will also reduce the saturation. Curves were used to return the scene to its original brilliant contrast and HSL was used to bring out the Reds and Yellows. Blue and Magenta were desaturated to eliminate the unwanted color fringe on the foliage in the sky. This picture, by the way, might have been an excellent candidate for a complete sky replacement except for the sky reflection in the water.

You are going to have to make a stand, like it or not. As you gain skill your objective is to refine your set of objectives. Your images captured in the field will better serve your retouching objectives. Your improving skills and knowledge of Photoshop (or your favorite program) will result in better output and increased productivity.

As time progresses you should steadily refine your objectives. Study the disasters and learn from them that how you can push color saturation just so far or maybe even push further. You will learn more about the conditions present in your raw images that will allow you to make better retouching decisions. And perhaps as the ultimate, you might even develop a set of skills and procedure for producing a variety of different results from a single given input image. Do you really want this one contrasty or do you want to simulate a cloudy foggy day? How would you do it?

This writer has made a choice. NationalGeo style images are more fun to look at and The Hidden Hills of the Berkshires presented fun pictures to look at even though they weren't all that accurate. Therefore, the pictures contained on this page (and others in this site) are all adjusted to maximize saturation of colors and contrast. The objectives are to produce bright images that push the capabilities of the system as far as possible without, hopefully, going too far. Many of you seeing them on monitors that are intentionally adjusted to produce brighter colors and higher contrast may think them too bright or too contrasty. But it is the artistic license to do so. Since they are all adjusted to produce a tonal range within shadow and highlight limits, they should be workable on most monitor systems. If they do not appear as such on your system it may be the extreme differences in equipment or simply that you do not like oversaturated and contrasty pictures. For this we apologize but hope you will at least stick around to at least read the article!