Photoshop® Elements 8 After the Shoot

Chapter 7. Working with Color

Now that you know how to get the brightness and contrast of your photos dialed in, it's time to consider the second most important aspect of making your photos look great — color. Up until now, you may have been accepting the color you get straight out of your camera. That's about to change as I show you a variety of ways to manage and improve color. Before you get to that, though, it's worth taking a few moments to consider color theory and how it applies to you and your photography.

Understanding Color Theory

One of the first things to understand about color is that it's personal. Everyone has his or her own preferences. When I worked in a professional photo lab, we had lab standards for skin-tone colors.

However, certain customers wanted the skin tones in their prints to have a particular tint. Even though we didn't like the color the customer wanted, we did everything in our power to make them happy.

Some of this bias relates to personal taste, and some of it has more to do with individual color perception. Not everyone sees color the same.

In fact, your own color perception can shift as your blood sugar levels go up and down. Some people are deficient in seeing color on a red-green axis; others are deficient on a blue-yellow axis. However, few people are completely colorblind.

Note

More men are affected by color blindness than women.

Even though how people experience color can be highly subjective, the physics behind color theory is rock solid. When considering ...