The challenges of attaining pleasing color start with the camera and lenses. Film cameras and digital camera sensors see colors that the human eye cannot perceive. Viewing digital files on monitors, our captured images may display over-saturated color, purple skies, brilliant yellow sun-kissed grass, and bluish-white wedding dresses. Many of these colors may not reproduce on photographic paper or reproduce an unpredictable, unpleasing color. Use your soft proof viewing capability in Adobe
® Photoshop
® to simulate how the final image will reproduce in print. Contact the
Help Desk for more information on soft proofing.
The illustration above on the right depicts how large an area visible light is compared to the colors available in color photographic paper. The 3-D model on left also shows the differences in our monitors colors and color paper. Be mindful of purples and yellow-greens that can be seen on a monitor, but are not reproducible on color paper. Both models do not depict the invisible light (Ultra-violet) that film and camera sensors can reproduce.
For the best pleasing color to be reproduced, choose a strong UV filter (I recommend something stronger than just a “UV protector”) for all of your lenses. It needs to be able to cut-off, eliminate and reduce the UV rays that film or a camera sensor captures, but less sensitive to human eyes. Kodak recommends using a UV filter, a Wratten 2B series, to filter out the UV rays that create inaccurate and unpleasing color to our eyes. Check out
Kodak’s Publication # E-73 to understand the different phenomenon that capturing UV rays can cause.
Understanding these digital fundamentals will go a long way in achieving predictable pleasing color.
posted @ Tuesday, March 16, 2010 10:45 AM