Maximizing Colour during Post-Scan Editing

Note: This tutorial is aimed at the moderately experienced Photoshop user. Beginners may find it confusing. Those who work with other edit programs, such as Paintshop Pro, PhotoShop LE, Corel, Gimp, etc., will probably be able to parallel most of the steps employed.

Fig 1a. Shades of grey

The tradition of black-and-white - shades of grey or sepia - is deeply rooted in photography. For most of photography's 170 or so years of existence it was the only game in town. There are those who continue to work in that tradition ... and I respect them for that ... but count me out. I have a passion for colour. My monitor and my printer can display 16,777,216 hues and I love every single one of 'em.

Fig 1b. Colour

Mother Nature is our great teacher in colour usage; she also by turns preaches restraint and flamboyance. Subtleties of desert and woodland; ecstasies of sunrise and autumn. The safe way to do colour in photography is to confine oneself to reproducing nature as purely as possible. Many art photographers do just that ... and I respect them for that ... but once again count me out. I don't pass up a compositionally promising scene just because Ma Nature is having a bad colour day.

As photographers, when outside the studio we often have less than complete control over line and form - we take what the world provides or move on. A paint-and-brush artist, even one of the photo-realism persuasion, feels complete freedom to fail to include that No Littering sign or to move that child's sand bucket to the other side of the canvas, if doing so improves the composition. A paint-and-brush artist also feels free to change (and hopefully improve) on Ma Nature's choice of colours whenever it suits his purposes. Yes - that single bright orange wildflower in the middle of the green field may be just what was there at that moment; no - it's not necessary to pass up an otherwise gorgeous composition because of a single colour clash. But no artist worth her oils will stop there. If the grass is the "wrong" shade of green she'll change it.

In like vein, when my film scanner is through puttering with a frame, the image it spits out rarely has a strong resemblance to the original scene. That's because I shoot neg film. For some reason most shots have a purple cast of one strength or another. I'm not much concerned. Even fully corrected, most films - neg or reversal - have their own colour biases. I'm not much concerned about that either. Because I'm not much concerned about reproducing the exact colours of the original scene. For me the print is my symphony and the original scene is my rondo form - a sparse framework on which to lavishly apply broad swaths of timbres and tones.

Let's follow the progress of a typical image from raw scanner droppings to print master file; and we'll see if I can convert you to the symphonic side of the spectrum.

- 1 -