Color Escalation

- CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE -

One picture with two colorful variations.

I took this shot while looking down and through a railing at Hynes Auditorium in Boston using a Canon G6. I don't like to take the full gear on business trips but I gotta have some kind of camera with me! The G6 is perfect. It's the last Canon portable camera to shoot in RAW. It gets 7.1 megapixels. The only shortcoming with the camera is that its top ISO is 400 and a bit noisy too.


So here we have a somewhat interesting view of an escalator through the rails of a fence. It was shot in low light so we picked up some noise (red-green-blue artifacts) in the shadow areas. The exposure was 1/15 @ f3.2 (ISO 400). I had to steady myself against a post to avoid camera shake. The slow shutter speed also helped create movement in the people getting off the escalator.

To clean up the noise takes some time in Photoshop. Instead let's take this weakness and turn it into a strength.


This version shows enhanced, rich colors yet not leaving the real world. This was done by boosting the highlights and saturation, and darkening the shadows. It looks more interesting than the standard colors in the top photo. What is really great is that most of the noise is completely subdued in this image.

But let's see if we can push the limits a little more.


Here the image is showing a reverse or negative view. Brightness was increased and Light areas were boosted. Contrast was flattened to the extreme.

Here's a look at the Tone Curve. As you can see it is a reversal of a normal tone curve.


Reprocessing the color in digital can be fun and even going to the extremes can be rewarding.

Which one do you like?

Copyright 2007 James D. Fisher
All Rights Reserved.