Colours into tones 1

Original

Grayscale

Using a photo of a creation my son made containing a range of different colours, I worked with altering green and red as being opposing colours. The image also contained colours such as orange, pink, purple and brown.

I worked in RAW, set the black and white point, increased the brightness slightly and  converted the image to grayscale. I saved a copy of this for comparison later.

Red becomes darker / green becomes lighter



Red darker/green lighter

Starting with the grayscale version, I decreased the red slider from –8 to –14. I noticed that shadow detail was lost if the slider value was reduced further. I increased the green value from –27 to +100.

As well as red becoming darker and green becoming lighter, I noticed that orange and brown also became darker. Shadow detail in the left hand corner increased and the shadow definition of the image became more distinct. Pink and white remained the same.

Green becomes darker / red becomes lighter


green darker/red lighter

Using the same grayscale version, I increased the red slider from –8 to +63 and decreased the green slider from –27 to –40. Lower than this value, the green became too dark.

Oranges, pinks and browns became lighter and the shadows were less defined. The chocolate splashed onto the pink marshmallow became less noticeable.

I prefer the darker red / lighter green version because the shadow detail is maintained and the image feels more balanced.  I know what the subject is about, so I think I am drawn to this one because the chocolate is darker. This opens up the debate about colours having emotional ties in photographs and by removing the colours we see things differently.