ku # 628 ~ more autumn color
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 10:05AM 
Thick and wet Autumn mist ~ along the West Branch of the Au Sable River • click to embiggenIn response to yesterday's entry, man & nature # 243 ~ different strokes for different folks, Breandan Dezendorf commented:
I salute the way you capture the subtle tones of nature.
I call your attention to this comment not so much for the kudos-factor (nevertheless, thanks Breandan) as for the opportunity to state that I owe it all to the PS H&S slider. Well, not all, but the fact remains that, when I use the H&S slider, it is most often to reduce saturation rather than increase it.
At times the saturation reduction is global but more often than not it is used to reduce a specific individual color. In my experience, I find that all cameras have color biases of one sort or another that require correction if one is seeking to present "real" - as real as the medium and its tools allow - color.
I have also found that these biases are not necessarily consistent across all color balance settings in any given camera so what it all comes down to is getting to know your camera's biases (or, obviously, your film's biases) and working around them to get the results you want.
Reader Comments (3)
The problem with getting it real is that unless you process and print the image on the spot you must rely on memory to determine the right amount of saturation. I know musicians with perfect pitch, but I've never heard of someone that is able to tell the temperature of colour just by looking. Besides, there are few things less reliable than memory. Unless digital camera capture can be standardized like chemical film processing was (to a large extent at least), determining what’s real and not is like trying to tell how many hair a bald person needs not to be bald. Is trying to get colour real worth the effort?
Thanks for the feedback. I was slightly pressed for time yesterday, so I didn't leave a longer/better comment. I grew up in the mountains around Asheville, NC, and I have seen many mornings that look like the photographs you post here. It's all the more impressive, as those mornings have been washed through my childhood memory filter.
Trying to get real color depends on what you are trying to do with the image. Sometimes, it's worth agonizing over, adjusting and shifting and leveling until exactly the right balance is achieved. I really appreciate the time and work that goes into it. I usually start processing an image trying to get the color, white balance, exposure, etc up to the highest quality I can, and then I decide where I want to go with an image. Some days, I drop the sliders off the left side and wash the image out. Others, I . It all depends on what kind of photograph you are trying to make.
(It makes it even harder when you are mildly colorblind, and have to get friends and family members to check your output, to make sure you didn't overdo it. It really helps to get some kind of colorimeter. I borrow one from a friend from time to time to help adjust my screens and make sure they haven't walked too far off course.)
There is no real color in any image. You can't even represent it. You can picture relations of intensities, and you can hope that what you put on the screen or on paper strikes a chord, but you can really forget about picturing reality. There is no real color in any image. Not in yours, not in mine.