How to Edit Colour and Create your own Style

this episode is sponsored by Squarespace whether you need a domain website or online store make your next move with Squarespace [Music] I recently put out a video showing you how to edit dramatic black and white images using some simple techniques and a bunch of you were asking about the color editing process as well I'll give you a couple of specific questions panels GTL and YouTube asks what is the importance of grading photos can a mediocre photos suddenly become great can I only improve a good photo or is it unnecessary and might Baldwin on YouTube ask is it worth paying for color presets and how easy is it to make your own so let me start with a confession I am partly colorblind I've got what's called mild do turn colorblindness which means that on the red green spectrum things start to get a little hazy in low light oranges and reds and yellows and greens and browns can start to look very similar to each other and I also need to be very careful of pinks and pale greens can start to the very similar and things can get fuzzy in their area as well it was actually a huge insecurity for me when I was starting out in photography I often wondered you know if I'm shooting portraits and actually the skin tones are slightly green perhaps instead of slightly pink because I was fuzzy on that spectrum and I wondered if I was putting images out there that looked ridiculous and everyone else could see it and I couldn't it's like if you've ever edited images on an uncalibrated monitor and you think everything looks good but you look at it on another computer or on a phone and you realize wow that monitor I was editing on was way off except that was my own eyes over time that I think I've been able to compensate by being very very aware of that stuff knowing where my weaknesses and limitations are and just paying extra special attention but it has made me hyper aware of color and I think for two reasons for me one is this a portrait photographer I have to be very very aware of people's skin tones they should look warm and they should look natural and to is color consistency and this is what I want to hammer on about today because it's so important all the best photographers that you know have a consistent looking portfolio when you scroll down their pages their photos look like each other you don't have wild colors on one and muted tones on another or very cool tones on and warm tones on another you can scroll down professional photographers Instagram pages or websites and their photography has a feel to it that's like a thread that runs through all their images I think if you want to be a professional photographer consistency is really really important because as people look down your portfolio if your images are very different from each other they're gonna wonder which guy am I going to get on this day that I hire him but if you've got a consistent look and feel to your photography it means that you have control it means you can set yourself a target and you can go out and hit it every time and it means someone can trust you that if they're going to put an image in front of you or a style that they want that you are capable of nailing that on a consistent basis this whole question came up for me a few years ago and I had to start thinking seriously about what colors did I want to be synonymous with my style and how was I going to bake those in and keep them consistent through my images and funny enough it wasn't actually looking at photographs that helped me the most in thinking about this it was watching cinema now I'm not a professional colorist by any stretch of the imagination but as I've started to work with video and especially pay attention to what I'm seeing when I watch a movie it's very clear that in cinema they seem to have a lot more latitude to be creative with the with the colors and the look that they go for but what's very very clear is that when they nail that color or look they want for the film that they run it throughout the entire piece that you can put up thumbnails of an entire movie and see what colors they're using to create the mood of the film but the biggest trick I think I learned from cinema was and this is what I want to give you today because I think it'll help you think about color in your own images is it's not necessarily about the colors that you see it's as much about the colors that you don't see let's look at a couple of recent movies just to show you what I mean so let's just take a quick look at three movies which I've really enjoyed in the last couple of years and the first one is the Martian which you can see from this still it's a it's a beautiful rich earthy color palette with nice oranges and browns in there because obviously they want to make us feel Mars and we this is the stereotype that we have of Mars that it's a very warm it's the Red Planet so if you look at the color palette you can see muted earthy tones Browns creams and sort of warm oranges that aren't too saturated but what you don't see and this is as important there is no blue in there there's no cyan in there there is no green in there and if we look at this behind the scenes still we can see that it would have looked pretty ordinary if we were standing there on set you can see the skies blue you can see the colors and people's shirts and everything else but if you look at the stills from the movie put together you can see that they've totally taken those colors out and they've they've created a palette for us that gives the movie of feel and gives the shot two shots and consistency let's take a look at another movie which I loved which was the revenant and you can see from this still that beautiful cool tones through the whole movie they want you to feel cold they want you to feel struggling through a barren wilderness so you can see from the color palette that there are cool tones and and very kind of D saturated tones but what you notice is there is no strong red in there there's no yellow in there there is no green in there that they've washed it all out so that we just create this moody color palette again when you look at the behind the scenes shot you can see the warm color and the rocks it looks pretty normal like if we would have been standing there but then if you look at the stills from the movie put together you can see how they've taken all that out to create a color palette of cool tones to make you feel cold and make you feel like you're in this space and shot-to-shot it looks very consistent let's take a look at one more which I thought visually was really striking which was Mad Max and in this one it's a very very traditional Hollywood color mix you can see your teal and orange look so they're going to play with those two colors which are opposite on the color spectrum and create color contrast the shots infusing the skies with a wither with a very strong teal color that the sky never looks that color and very very rich oranges and skin tones and the desert around so you can see on that color palette there that all those times are represented but what's not represented is there is no strong blue and there's no strong yellow they're almost skipping it out and maybe not even any strong red those tones are getting pushed to either the teals or the yellows so look at this behind the scenes shot you can see the sky is a blue that you're never going to see in the movie itself and people are wearing different colors that won't be represented in the color palette and then if we look at these stills from the actual movie put together you can see the consistent of the oranges and the teals and everything on that spectrum so it's as much about the colors that you see in those pallets as it is about the colors that you don't see now cinema is probably going to stylize way more than we want to with our photographs but hopefully this will help you think about getting a consistent color look to your shots so let's just take a look editing on a phone doing something very simple and obviously everything that I'm going to show you this is the simplest version you can take it much much more complicated in both Lightroom or Photoshop or any other editing program you choose okay so we've got these four images they're very different from each other in terms of colors and tones but with a few edits we can start to bring them together so I'm going to use an app called darkroom there are other apps available obviously I think on Android someone said last time that there's an app called polar pol a double R which has a lot of these curves and hue/saturation sliders and it's free so check that out if you want this one here so let's start with this first image and I'm going to go first of all into my hue saturation and luminance sliders which is where I'm going to start to edit up the color and remember again it's it's as much about what I want to see is what I don't want to see and with this series let's just say that I want to create kind of warm earthy brown tones through all these images so I don't want to see strong blues and strong scions and I can maybe start to tweak the greens as well so for these images that's the basic little formula going to have in my head so if I start with the blues I can start to bring the saturation down a bit and again for the scions and then if I go to my yellows I can start to boost those up a bit as well as my oranges and my reds is going to create some earthiness in there and I might even just pull the magenta a little bit as well and with my luminance again if I want the lights to pop a little bit I can sort of bring the luminance up on those and strive with the yellows and the oranges there so you can see already there's a little bit more consistency in that shot then I can take the overall temperature and just boost it up a little bit I can come down here to my sharpness sharpen that up and vignette it a little bit this image would look good with a bit of a vignette on it and that's already looking really good and I can start to pull my curves in so just that basic shallow s-curve which will give me a nice bit of contrast and you can see already that's starting to create those so warm brownie tones in there that I want to see with the hue slider just to explain it what you can do is if you select any kind of set I want to select the greens obviously your hue runs read through orange yellow green cyan blue and through your purples and magentas and that's that's going to be the case always with a hue slider if I select green I can shift the hue a little way towards a different color of a particular color so on green I can take it left towards yellow or I can take it right towards cyan which means cooling it off so with the greens because they're sitting in the middle maybe what I want to do is just warm those up if there are any greens in there just bringing them towards those warmer tones so that I think is looking pretty good let's say about a copy of that slowed up another one so here we've got very very blue very very cold tones in this one so this one needs a bit more work so let's start with hue saturation luminance so what I'm going to do is start with my blues I'm going to bring down the luminance so it makes it darker like I do with the black and white and then bring down that saturation a bit the same with the scions darken the signs down and I'm also going to bring down some of that saturation as well and maybe what I'll do is also shift them towards green a little bit and that'll have the effect of warming them up with my oranges again let's boost up my oranges boost up my yellows and boost up my Reds is going to bring those warm tones through and the greens I might bring the luminance down a little bit because they're a bit fierce and the foreground and also drop the saturation attached and bring it slightly towards yellow so there you can see now if we're going to start tweaking with our curves it's really yeah bring those darks down sort of accentuate the shape of those staircases and there you can see already it's a vignette that a little bit for the sky and sharpen up a touch you can see already that we've started to pull through warmer tones now if I kick my temperature up a touch to sort of warm that out that's looking pretty good to me and back those shadows off just a little bit and then if I export this one and it's bringing a new one let's try this one so this one's nice because there are always some nice earthy tones in here so again start with my HSL sliders and I'm going to go to my blue tones and pull down the saturation pull down that luminance a little bit pull down the saturation the scions and luminance I want a warm up will saturate my warmer tones then maybe I'll just boost them up a little bit as well because at yellow on the backpack and there and that blanket there because sort of bring them up a little bit and greens maybe want to desaturate the Greens just a little bit we still want to keep them in the mix for that Brown feel and there's not much in there anyway but that's starting to look pretty good and then in my curves we can start to bring in my contrast again there we go and then a little bit of a vignette and a little bit of sharpening and that's looking pretty good and then just warm up the whole thing a touch and that already you can see from a cool image is starting to look nice and earthy with those brown tones let's export that one export save a copy you can see this is very quick I don't need to spend a lot of time on these but very quickly I can start to bring sort of a color feel through these images and this for me is better than presets because I'm not just hitting a button and letting it apply it uniform to every shot I'm looking at each shot and assessing how much of these sliders need to go in and that'll help you with greater consistency so let's go with this from blues again I'm going to desaturate those blues and darken them right down on this one the same of the scions and maybe I'm going to warm that up just a bit towards green and then I'm going to darken that right down as well so it's looking quite desaturate that's sky now which means we're pulling those colors out and let's go to yellows and boost the saturation a bit again oranges boost it a little bit red we're going to boost a little bit and there's some greens in there which would do something funny I want to bring those towards you yellow just to sort of take that down and this is quite a stylized shot but I kind of like it let's go into our curves we're going to start to pull in that contrast I like that and then let's go to our vignette a little bit and then sharpening just a touch and then again we're gonna warm the whole thing up just slightly it's quite stylized I might bring back some of the blue just a little bit but don't I don't want it here do you know what I mean because that's bringing back thick in that mix and I'm losing those tones so it gives a nice kind of earthy brown tone to everything so let's export that and with those four images now we should be seeing a lot more consistency than we have before they were quite different from each other and now just pulling in those tones taking out the colors I don't want to see I'm pushing in a bit more of the colours that I do want to see I'm creating a lot more consistency between those shots so I hope that's helped you know whether you're on Instagram or you've got your website or just your images in general wherever you post them that you've started to think about how you're going to start to run a thread of color through your images and bring them all together I know the colours which make up the mix in my images and which define my look and my challenge to you is find your mix don't always rely on a preset it's a great skill to have to be able to to create your own look and be able to do it on any platform at any time without your bundle of presets find a look that's yours you can copy mine if you want you could copy someone else's if you want but if you find your look by playing around and tweaking you are genuinely defining your own style and it's going to make you unique thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring this video if you need a website or a domain they really are a fantastic place to go and get all that done in one shot they have some beautifully designed templates they're very crisp and clean and minimalist and especially as a photographer I like them because there's no clutter so it really shows off the images you load up I've used them for five years now myself long before I thought they'd ever be a sponsor one of the things I like about Squarespace is they've got a Squarespace Analytics app which is hooked up to your website and gives you a readout of all the stats coming in from your site who's visiting when they're visiting what pages they're looking at what links they're clicking on to find you what search terms they're putting in so that they discover your site and it's a brilliant way to be able to be a bit more strategic about marketing yourself online start your free trial today at squarespace.com and go to Squarespace comm forward slash Sean Tucker to get 10% of your first purchase [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Sean Tucker

Views: 855,135

Keywords: colour, editing colour, color, editing color, creating color consistency, defining your look, creating your photography style, your photography style, edit without presets, lightroom, photoshop, darkroom app, editing on iphone, photography editing, how to edit colour, how to edit color, sean tucker photography, photography q and a, create your own look, defining your style, photography style, fuji x100, canon 80D, pixapro 100mkII+, black and white video, editing for instagram

Id: xnFuvnCJduM

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/nsolarz]

I watched this video the other day, very eye opening. Color photography has always been my weak point. This video "showed me the door" into how I can improve. I'm excited to shoot in color again.

[u/HeWhoCouldBeNamed]

I found it very interesting that he focused so much on being platform agnostic on this. His recent video on food photography also showed how well photos can turn out from an older, weaker camera compared to a current professional model. I like his attitude.

[u/MarkEvansDigital]

Glad i watched this!

[u/pkb4112]

This is really, really good, thanks for sharing.

[u/JT_Armstrong]

I'm just tired of the squarespace ads lol

[u/[deleted]]

Seans great. Hope he keeps making great content and not get into that nasty habit of churning out half baked re-fried content for ad revenue and sponsor name drops like some of our other favourite photo-youtubers have.

[u/Jon_J_]

How would you go about finding a colour palette for an image like he does?