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Totally   Retro

10/15/2012

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by ~cat-woman-amy--stock
Dash of Inspiration
Post for GCU Community Blog

Definition from Reference.com:
“Retro  is a term used to describe, denote or classify culturally outdated or aged trends, modes, or fashions, from the overall postmodern past, but have since that time become functionally or superficially the norm once again. The use of “retro” style iconography and imagery interjected into American postmodern art, advertising, mass media, etc. has occurred from around the time of the U.S. industrial revolution to present day.” ...


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part 3 - Mini   series:  creative   tinting   and   toning

11/7/2011

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Part 3
Creative Tinting and Toning
Published November 7th, 2011

Creative Tinting: When & How to Apply it

Hand-colored photographs were most popular in the mid to late 19th century before the invention of color photography and in the years since has evolved as a technique in the photographic arts using digital tools. I myself in a previous life, spent many hours painstakingly applying Marshall oils with q-tips and cotton swabs. The results were always wonderful and worth the effort, even when you needed to go back to the darkroom for a new print and start over. Today this hand-selective coloring of photographs can be done simply and easily using digital tools.

Another pleasing effect from past eras is toning. Applying a tint to a black and white photograph to change the mood. Most commonly used was Sepia toning and I'm glad this tone in particularly can be applied digitally now. In a real darkroom back in the day, toning sepia prints meant breathing in an absolutely horrid rotten egg smell! I have vivid memories of being a child and going to work with my mother who worked in a commercial photographic processing lab with large rocking tanks and cradles.

So in this lens we are going to talk about both hand-tinting and toning photographs. I'll show examples of what works and talk about why. Let's start with Toning photographs.

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The definition of TONING:

A darkroom technique used to alter the blacks of a black & white image to a selected color of choice. Toning began in the old-fashioned darkroom, so the paper base was not affected by the toning leaving the whites, white. The most commonly used tones of that era were sepia and blue. Today, toning can be achieved digitally using most software’s hue/saturation settings, duo-tone processing and any number of other techniques.

The key here is that in order for toning to look professionally applied and pleasing to the eye, you must take in these things into considerations

1) Does my subject match the mood of the color-tone I wish to apply?

2) Have my whites in the photograph remained white to ensure I have successfully toned my photograph?

Color = Emotion

When choosing to tone your photographs using the techniques I offer here, it is imperative that for your final imagery to be wildly accepted by your viewing audience that you match the color of tone to be applied to the subject. A Red tone on a child running in a meadow for example doesn’t really make any sense considering red to most people represent strong emotions not usually associated with children. Just as in most cases animals are not good choices for toning blue, it’s an unnatural color for animals. For example; turkeys are associated with Thanksgiving and when we think of Thanksgiving we think of warm fall colors, so if we saw a blue toned turkey our minds would reject that rather than embrace it.

It’s important to remember the feelings evoked in the viewer through color when choosing to tone a photograph and also keep in mind that not all subjects are appealing when toned in the wrong color. Yellow and green toning for example are not very appealing when the subject is a person or an animal. There are always exceptions, but if the person’s skin is part of the photograph and you tone it yellow or green, viewers will reject this image because we immediately think of illness, same often applies to animals (those with fur anyway).


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You also want to try and avoid excessive saturation when toning photos. This is rarely appealing and you can loose so much of the photographic quality that the viewer no longer feels the mood of the subject.

So, understanding the emotions the color evokes helps you make the right choice for your subject.


Blues are cool colors, they offer feelings of serenity, trust and stability. Blue is perceived as a constant in our daily lives and our bodies produce chemicals that calm us when viewing some shades of blue. Brilliant blues can express exhilaration and give a dynamic sense of energy while other shades of blue are cool and sober.



This is a classic example of making blue tones work on a photograph. Because the image is of waterfalls and water in our minds is often blue, our imaginations embrace this image and evoke emotions of serenity.




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Dreamy Waterfalls by ©Dave Lawrance This beautiful image is available on a Card by Dave Lawrance

Sepia Tones


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Original Photograph by Doreen Erhardt and the St. George Salon of Art, LLC
In photo-toning, a brown tone would be referred to as a Sepia tone offering feelings of wholesomeness, organic and down-to-earth. Sepia tones are now considered a vintage look and are often a very pleasant effect on almost any subject matter. True Sepia from the past leans more towards the red hues which is what I tend to apply as in the horse image above, however over the years Sepia tones have been used with more of a yellowish tint.

Brown is a disguise that can be used to effectively hide your true nature, so it’s no wonder that it’s a good choice to hide a lack of harmony in a photograph’s true colors.



This is a wonderful example of using Sepia tone. The photographer used the wholesome, organic tones that brown offers and combined them with an organic subject for a delightful visual image. The additional benefit of the Sepia tone in this image is that what would otherwise be competitive distractions in the background become an organic backdrop.


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Boxer Dog by ©Tamara Dawn Adams
Also available as a greeting card

Red and Green Tones

In general, both of these colors are poor choices for toning. Though they are colors which portray emotions, there aren’t very many photographic subject that will tolerate the use of these two colors throughout the image.

GREEN:

Greens offer a sense of renewal, harmony and growth. It is the color associated with peace and ecology. Be aware however of the bilious institutional side of green which can conjure up negative emotions. Green can be soothing and alleviate depression and anxiety. Green toned photographs unless they are of grasses or trees tend to make most subjects look ill.

RED:

Red tones stimulate feelings that are passionate, exciting and confident. They can also evoke negative feelings and a sense of danger. Red can draw attention and focus to a particular element to increase enthusiasm. Red toned photographs, with the exception of flowers and some types of still life compositions have a tendency to look like Armageddon.

Therefore these two tones are rarely used by professional photographers.

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Original Photography by Doreen Erhardt and the St. George Salon of Art, LLC
The color purple takes on the characteristics of both red and blue embodying the balance of the unrest which red evokes with the serenity of blue. Purple makes us think of royalty, offers a sense of spirituality and can encourage creativity. It is a contemporary color which can be uplifting.

Also choose purple when you want to encourage fantasy, mystery and imagination.



Yellow is cheery, sunny and mentally stimulating. It shines with happiness and hope for a positive future. Yellow is also the sign of caution, so match this tone to your subject well and be sure to evoke the right message. Yellow, when leaning more towards gold hues can be very nice on flower images, holiday ornaments and any inanimate object where you wish to portray a sense of aging.

This tone works well in Maxwell’s photo giving the Civil War image a weathered and aged feeling.


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Yellow Tones Appomattox Civil War Image by ©Maxwell

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Beautiful Example of Split Toning
Foggy Morning by ©Eve Parry
This beautiful image is available on Greeting Card Universe as a card by Eve Parry
This image evokes a sense of calm and is very relaxing. The blues as portrayed in this image give a feeling of distance. Artists use it to show perspective. Blue allows us to look beyond and increase our perspective on life.

Split toning creates a duo-tone effect where the shadows and highlights of of two different colors. This was popular in film developing methods and can be achieved in the digital darkroom in mere moments.


Split Toning - Split Toning in Photoshop by Yanik's Photo School

The term "split toning" means we'll be adding a color tint to the highlights using one color, and then using a different color to tint the shadows. The two colors you use can be similar, giving you a subtle effect, or they can be complete opposites. It's really up to you and the effect you're going for. Whichever colors you choose, split toning an image can be a great way to add more visual interest to a black and white photo.

Mastering the Art of Black and White Toning by Andrew Gibson

The good news is that it's easy to add color to black and white images. Photographers have been doing it for decades, both in the darkroom and digitally, through a process called toning.

Breathtaking Split Toning Effect by TPulse

Find out how to make your photos look breathtaking with this classic split toning effect.


More BEAUTIFUL examples of toning.

The hand-colored black and white photographs of yesterday are hard to come by in this digital era and as with most traditional photographic techniques; the digital variations are never quite the same, but no less appealing. This is true of hand-colored or hand-tinted photographs as well. The old-fashioned way is very different in the final image than that which was done in a digital darkroom. But if you allow yourself to experiment and grow, then like me even those of us trained in the cotton ball application of Marshall Oils can achieve magnificent results using these new environmentally safe tools of the trade.

This exquisite image is available at Greeting Card Universe on a card by Yvonne Emerson

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Selective Tinting An Extraordinary Example
by ©Yvonne Emerson
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PURRfect Example of Hand-Tinting
by ©Digital Midge
There are many, many ways to achieve selective color or tinting using tools like Photoshop. You will have your best luck by learning two or three through tutorials and then by experimentation developing your own method to achieve the results you like.

This adorable image is available at Greeting Card Universe on a card by Digital Midge

Julie offers us an inviting example of the traditional hand-coloring methods. These oils used offered a translucent effect to allow the print itself to show through, therefore the results were often pastel-like, soft and a bit faded in their appearance.

This wonderful image is available at Greeting Card Universe as a card by Julie Bergmann


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Beach Baby by ©Julie Bergmann
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Slugger by ©Ross Ozer
This adorable image is available at Greeting Card Universe on a card by Ross Ozer
The real key to success when using these techniques is to choose where you add color based on the impact it will make to the viewer. These methods are intended to draw attention to the subject and help tell a story, when done correctly as Ross did with his little Baseball Slugger, the final image is magic.

When done haphazardly either by the actual application being sloppy or choosing to the wrong subject to work with, the results are not only ineffective, but can be very unappealing. Do not color outside the lines or lazily apply color which overlaps on another area. This looks horrible in print and reminds the viewer of a child who can’t yet color within the lines.


Traditional Hand Tinting Photographs


Introduction to Hand Coloring by Terri Sprinkle

The art of hand coloring black and white prints has been around almost as long as photography itself. Its humble beginnings date back to those early days of the first daguerreotypes, when people began to realize that this new-fangled "photography" delivered exactly what it promised - the lens was capturing them just the way they looked. Often times, this was not what they wanted! Gone were those idealized portraits they were used to seeing from their portrait painters - the ones that put softness to their hair, a twinkle in their baby blue eyes and a romantic flush to their cheeks. While first dismayed at this apparent new intrusion onto their business of portraiture, it didn't take long for the shrewdest of portrait artists to figure out how they could still make money - by working alongside portrait photographers, and offering a new service: applying their colorful oils to these prints. The art of hand coloring photographs was born!

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Volcano Blues Traditional Hand Tinted Photograph
by Doreen Erhardt
'Volcano Blues' was a black and white photograph I took in a small historic town called Volcano. This tinted photo sold out as a signed and numbered limited edition Giclee and the original was sold.

Restoring and Hand-Coloring in Photoshop
The thing I particularly like about it is that it not only looks like a "real" hand-tinted photograph, but the technique is actually quite similar to that used with photographic paints (apart from having the benefits of zoom and undo). While I'm using a black and white photo of my grandparents' wedding day back in 1944, you could also use any colored image, desaturated, and follow the same process to provide a unique look.


Old-Fashioned, Hand-Tinted Photo Effect Written By Steve Patterson

In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, you'll learn how to easily create an old-fashioned, hand-tinted photo effect.  All it takes is an adjustment layer, a layer blend mode, some blurring, a slider bar, and a couple of minutes of your time.
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