Color selected photos....whats your take?

[BanditPhotographyNW]

It has been brought to my attention that Color selected photos are unprofessional and amaturish. I was unaware of this, I like color selected photos. I wanna hear from you all about this. This is the pic that was commented on about color selection. May not be the best choice but I actually like this pic. I was told this pic especially didnt work but was not told why. I truly am curious and do not by any means consider myself a Pro.

 

[Derrel]

When Adobe Photodeluxe was the amateur image editing/manipulation software of choice for amateurs, back in the late 1990's, selective color was one of the hot, new "special effects". The roots of the disdain for selective color date back to around that time...when wedding shooters would take a bridal photo with the bride holding her bouquet--with the bouquet in glorious, resplendent full color, and the bride in God-awful B&W tones. A year or two later, hordes of weekend warrior baby photographers were ripping off Anne Geddes, and dressing babies in huge "daisy" and "chrysanthemum" costumes, with you guessed it--black and white baby faces surrounded by huge, stupid-looking colored fake flower blossoms.

So, the roots of selective color being a newbie "Oh-wow-sooooo-kewl,man!" kind of effect go way back to the early days of digital cameras. It has never, ever overcome the stigma.

Selective color is the mullet hairstyle of the photo world. Selective color is the wife-beater and a 16-ounce can of Hamms beer of the underclass. Selective color is the hitch-hiking to see your girlfriend at the womens prison of white trash society. Selective color is the ________________ of ______________.

 

[Gavjenks]

I think selective color is fine as long as the thing that is selectively colored is the most interesting thing in your photo!

Doing a portrait where the person is B&W and some random object is colored is dumb, because you're drawing attention away from the person who is the whole point of a portrait. This would be the case in all of the examples Derrel mentions above, for example.

It's much trickier and rarer to make the color draw your eye to what should be the main subject. But if you do, it is okay. Not fantastic still, but okay. Still don't overuse it (as in more than a few times ever probably), and reserve it for times when there really is one obvious popout color that other colors in the photo are legitimately distracting from. Even then, I usually wouldn't do full selective color, personally. I'd up the saturation a few points on the target and bump it down a few points elsewhere, with feathering. Like a dodge or burn, sort of.

 

[BanditPhotographyNW]

Awesome these are the real world answers I am looking for. Thank you so much for your thoughts and I look forward to seeing more. I wasnt doing any photography at that time and have never been a real trendy person so I was unaware of this aspect of it. I do agree that those baby shots were terrible and should be forgotten...

 

[vintagesnaps]

Using red in a large portion of the image seems to overpower the black and white. I think too the reflection off the car makes for a mottled red and white which might be why this doesn't work so well as much as anything.

I think a little goes a long way with selective color, if it's used I think a small amount of color that's in a small area of the photo that's solid and not too textured looks better.

Maybe having just the front section of the car in red, with the logo in white, could work if you wanted to bring attention to that, but I'm not sure if even that would work. (I suppose you could make copies and do some experimenting but I'm not sure if the selective color works well in this photo.)

 

[Gavjenks]

Is that a disembodied random steering wheel on the windshield?

 

[cptkid]

One word

BLERGHHHHH

(that's the sound of me vomiting when I look at selective colour)

 

[Overread]

Selective colour is like HDR - lots of people do it badly and, for some reason, it also sparks pangs of pure anger in other photographers when they see it done badly (oddly they get more angry about these than they do missed focus, blurry shots, colour casts, etc...). It's one of those things where the dislike of it is almost just as much of a fad within one social group as the use of the method is a fad within another and part of the "hate" is social groupings disliking each other (ie "pure" photographers disliking the "newbies" who are not "true photographers").

 

[Benco]

Selective colour notwithstanding I'd say that your photo is a bit crowded, needs more room each side of the car. My take on selective colour is that I've never seen it done in a way that was appealing, it could possibly, maybe work in some abstract setting by a photographer who really knew their stuff.

 

[o hey tyler]

You may want to let that guy know that his passenger side headlight is out.

 

[amolitor]

Selective coloring is a cliche, but people like it, and they like it for an excellent reason: It works like crazy.

You can use selective saturation, where you boost the saturation on the thing that's interesting, and lower it on everything else, to a surprising degree before people will notice it as an effect, though. It's nearly as effective, and people won't yell at you for a tasteless newbie. Best to be pretty careful about exactly what you choose to emphasize, though. It's easy to create visual confusion by emphasizing the wrong thing.

 

[KenC]

This ^^^!! I would add that IMO selective saturation is preferable because it doesn't distract the viewer from what you want to emphasize. The effect, just like the effect from selective contrast or sharpening, is subtle and makes the viewer look at a certain part of the image without hitting him/her over the head with the effect. In the case of selective coloring, the first thing the viewer thinks is "look at that, only one thing is in color." An obvious vignette draws a similar reaction, and I can't see why a photographer would want this to be the first thing the viewer thinks about, even if that viewer can get past the cliche aspect, which many cannot.

 

[Ilovemycam]

OP, they are fine.

I would do a few if I knew how to do them. That is part of my goal for this year to learn more PP.

Photogs devoid a photo of color or hype it up with HDR. So nothing wrong with selective color. It is just part of the mix.

Do what you love...nice pix!

 

[manaheim]

When Adobe Photodeluxe was the amateur image editing/manipulation software of choice for amateurs, back in the late 1990's, selective color was one of the hot, new "special effects". The roots of the disdain for selective color date back to around that time...when wedding shooters would take a bridal photo with the bride holding her bouquet--with the bouquet in glorious, resplendent full color, and the bride in God-awful B&W tones. A year or two later, hordes of weekend warrior baby photographers were ripping off Anne Geddes, and dressing babies in huge "daisy" and "chrysanthemum" costumes, with you guessed it--black and white baby faces surrounded by huge, stupid-looking colored fake flower blossoms.

So, the roots of selective color being a newbie "Oh-wow-sooooo-kewl,man!" kind of effect go way back to the early days of digital cameras. It has never, ever overcome the stigma.

Selective color is the mullet hairstyle of the photo world. Selective color is the wife-beater and a 16-ounce can of Hamms beer of the underclass. Selective color is the hitch-hiking to see your girlfriend at the womens prison of white trash society. Selective color is the ________________ of ______________.

I have nothing better to say on the topic than what Derrel said but I wanted to add a +1 to the "yeah, no, don't" pile.

It probably can be done without being cheesy, but I have yet to see it accomplished.

 

[runnah]

It probably can be done without being cheesy, but I have yet to see it accomplished.

It has been done for years successfully in graphic novels. The whole Sin City movie was brilliant in this case.

Of course both of those mediums are done by very talented artists, not hacky photographers.