how to achieve color tints?

jgr025 · Aug 9, 2009

New to the forum, new to photography in general. Appreciate any tips or hints you are willing to share!!

I'm wondering how photographers achieve certain color tints or washes in their pics. Is this done by some kind of white balance adjustment or is it done through photoshop? Or a combination?

Thinking of pics like these, for example - how are they done?

http://4.media.tumblr.com/D9QEnuQFoprsev5oHcMWssz1o1_500.jpg

blue/green tint

http://8.media.tumblr.com/D9QEnuQFonm3sqxzAHo5ugfxo1_500.jpg magenta/blue tint

(sorry don't know the credit for these pics)

I could probably get a regular photo to look like this in photoshop if I tried hard enough, but I like the idea of doing it with the camera instead. Just wondering if this is a common, easy technique, as I see photos like this all the time.

Thanks again in advance.
- Jon

DScience · Aug 9, 2009

that's all PP bro. BTW, I believe it's against forum policy to post pics that aren't yours. Links are okay however.

musicaleCA · Aug 9, 2009

It doesn't have to be done with PP. You can easily create interesting tints in the image by changing the white balance on the camera and gelling a flash. You could, say, set the WB to a bit plusgreen, and then gel your flash minusgreen (magenta), to achieve a green tint or colour cast wherever the light from the flash isn't. (The magenta on the flash and green added in the camera cancel each other to produce white.)

A more common application of colour key shifting is setting a tungsten white balance and gelling the flash CTO. That creates a pretty cool effect, since if you add another CTO to flash you'll get warm and cold tones playing off each other in the same image.

For the first image, it's possible that a greenish WB was set, and a flash was gelled magenta and placed outside the window. For the second, it's possible that a flash was placed to the left of the frame, next to the bed pointed at the subject (zoomed out or through a modifier to add more spill), gelled green, and a magenta WB added in the camera.

All that, of course, would be after correcting for ambient light, both in camera and with gels, and then working from there. Start on a level playing field, so to speak.

And yes, you should link to the images, not post them directly.

Stosh · Aug 9, 2009

Just wanted to agree with musicaleCA and possibly add a few things.

As you can see both of these images have places that are white and places that are tinted in the same scene. Your eyes correct for this and you don't notice the color change when looking in person.

To create this you need 2 different sources of light. Any 2 with different colors will do. Daylight, incandescent light, fluorescent light, neon light, flashes, moonlight, etc. You have to be careful to balance them out the way you want them so one does or doesn't overpower the other. Then you adjust your white point in post processing. You can experiment by choosing different parts of your image for the white balance point. Every different place in your image will give a slightly different color cast to the rest of the image.

DScience · Aug 9, 2009

these pics are pp for sure. you cant get this look from lighting alone.

KmH · Aug 9, 2009

DScience said:
that's all PP bro. BTW, I believe it's against forum policy to post pics that aren't yours. Links are okay however.

Yes you believe correctly. It's all in the forums Rules & Regs that few new members bother to read.

Samanax · Aug 9, 2009

KmH said:
DScience said:

that's all PP bro. BTW, I believe it's against forum policy to post pics that aren't yours. Links are okay however.

Click to expand...

Yes you believe correctly. It's all in the forums Rules & Regs that few new members bother to read.

I think people would read the Rules & Regs if the Rules & Regs were easier to find...like as a link in the grey bar that has "Home", "Forum", "Active Topics", etc...I don't think a lot of people think of looking for the Rules & Regs in the Quick Links drop down.

musicaleCA · Aug 9, 2009

DScience said:
these pics are pp for sure. you cant get this look from lighting alone.

And what makes you so sure of that? Anyone can say anything. I'm inclined to believe that the first was done with colour key shifting on-location because of the desaturation of the green tint in the blinds (where the corrected light would have been spilling through).

Josh66 · Aug 9, 2009

DScience said:
these pics are pp for sure. you cant get this look from lighting alone.

Why not?

If you had two different lights, you would get this look by default unless you corrected for it.

Josh66 · Aug 9, 2009

I think the first one is way simpler than you think.

Fluorescent lights inside the room (which are known to cause a greenish cast), daylight coming from the window.

White balance on daylight.
No PP required.

EDIT
The second one could easily be the same kind of situation, but it looks more like PP to me.
You could do it just by using different light sources though.

jgr025 · Aug 9, 2009

wow, you guys are fast!! Great community here, thanks for all the replies. Much appreciated.

Apologies for the embedded pics, just wanted to save you guys the hassle of having extra clicks to see what I was talking about

I'll fix it now.

So I guess basically what you are saying is if I -can- control the light with gels or color temp and white balance, try it in camera. If not... then the same or close to it can be done with PP. Makes sense.

If I do any tests I'll post them in this thread and see how it goes. Again all new to this so I appreciate the advice!!

- jon

Josh66 · Aug 9, 2009

jgr025 said:
So I guess basically what you are saying is if I -can- control the light with gels or color temp and white balance, try it in camera. If not... then the same or close to it can be done with PP. Makes sense.

Yes.

You need two lights of differing color temperature. Set your white balance to one of them, let the other one be 'off'.

musicaleCA · Aug 9, 2009

O|||||||O said:
I think the first one is way simpler than you think.

Fluorescent lights inside the room (which are known to cause a greenish cast), daylight coming from the window.

White balance on daylight.
No PP required.

Hrm, yes, but, they would've been awfully lucky to get fluorescents like that any more. Fluorescents come in what, 50 different varieties or so now? There are just way too many different types (in terms of colour correction, there's magenta, green, CTO, daylight, and everything in-between, and worse, they shift with age); I lean toward the intentional colour key shift for that reason.

Josh66 · Aug 9, 2009

You're probably right.

Still, it could be entirely coincidence.

It does look like a stock photo though, so I suspect that every aspect of it was planned.
It's possible that the photographer had a few "green" fluorescent lights set aside for use in these kinds of shots.