GREAT COLOR

Great color begins in the camera with great lighting and proper exposure, as seen in the above professional snapshot of young Native American dance students performing on a live theater stage, the color is very good.

But what most people may not realize is how Photoshop® is used to balance, enhance true and artistic color, and convert it for various printing and viewing applications during the work flow. This process is based squarely on the skills and talents of the person working in Photoshop, but even the best color is very easy for someone to screw up if they don't know what they are doing when they open or print it....

"The number one goal in digital imaging is to CAPTURE as much color information as possible. "The number two goal is to PRESERVE that information during the editing process. "True color experts use camera RAW formats (.nef, .crw, cr2, .srf), and 16-bit wide-gamut RGB working spaces like ProPhoto RGB, Adobe RGB. "And we work inside Photoshop using specialized nonlinear Adjustment Layer master .psd work flows...". - G. Ballard

HOW TO GET GREAT COLOR IN PHOTOSHOP

Above Photoshop image was shot with a Nikon D300 digital camera in NEF RAW format. It was then opened in Photoshop CS4 using Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) Plug-In using 16-bit wide-gamut ProPhoto RGB color space and a professional Adjustment-Layer image editing workflow.

Lastly, it was flattened in Photoshop, cropped and scaled — then using Photoshop default Save For Web settings — the color was Converted to 8-bit sRGB and Un-Tagged (I actually prefer the untagged color on my monitors because it gives me a slight saturation boost).

EMBEDDED ICC PROFILE NOTE:

I also created and placed a Tagged version in a rollover (just CLICK ON the large Photoshop color image above to see its color-managed true color with its embedded ICC profile). You will need a color-managed Web browser to see the color change effect.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO ACHIEVE GREAT DIGITAL COLORS and troubleshoot bad colors problems, please see this popular G. BALLARD color tutorial.

EXAMPLES OF FANTASTIC PROFESSIONAL COLOR

CLICK on picture to view 100 new California Indian powwow pictures including many fantastic large high-resolution color pictures....

Professional color photography by G. Ballard, San Diego, for www.SCAIR.org.

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