Color, a general discussion

[Ben Egbert]

Well put - and this sounds similar to my approach. I tend to have a vision in my mind when I snap the shutter, including how I think I might process it. Once I sit down at the computer, all that may easily change. One of my first steps is usually to pick a white balance. My default import setting is for adobe's daylight setting. I'll look at that, at "as shot" (I usually shoot in auto WB for this purpose), and adobe auto just to see what they look like. I may try setting it to a cloudy or shade preset as well. Having seen all that, I'll move the slider around. While I like to think that I don't stray too far from a natural look, sometimes I see something in this exercise that I really want to pursue (this one will be blue!). Sometimes I feel like the image is my guide and I just have to let it lead me.

I have been all over the map here. I have used custom camera profiles, prophoto RGB and expodisk. Now I have simplified. I use AWB with the idea to make adjustments in ACR. I use camera faithful for a profile and aRGB as my color space. I often warm up an image in ACR, I just like warm better than cold. But always with a small amount.

I use threshold to find the darkest and lightest points, mark them and then in curves I set these at 5/5/5 for dark and 250/250/250 for light. This tends to neutralize the image, but if I want it warmer at the end, that easy to get. At least I have a full histogram to work with. But sometimes I want to leave the color alone so I just make sure the top number is not 255 or more in any channel, usually red.