Reproducing Color in Media

Creating Color from Black and White

In this workshop we will look at the basic method used in the 'automatic recording and reproduction' of color.

By doing that, we will defamiliarize what we take for granted and insert ourselves into the process (that is usually a black box to us) that mediate between the world and a technically produced image.

What is expected for this exercise

Part 1: take three black and white photographs one with red, one with green, and one with blue filters. Combine them to recreate a color photograph to understand how media deals with color
Part 2: explore. For example,
- the possibility of this techinque to make a compelling artistic image
- research/demonstrate other ways media creates color (eg. temporal mixing?)
- other related topics (see below for more ideas)

Notes

Making Color Images from Three Black and White Photographs

Set the camera to take photos in black and white. You MUST be able to take b/w photographs.

Use black and white film. Will take a lot of time. (3 - 4 weeks worth of photo class required)
Use digital camera
- Set the camera to take photos in jpeg. You'll get color photographs if you ask for RAW files
- Set the camera to shoot in B/W (Monochrome)
  - Nikon D7000 & D7100 -> Menu -> Camera Icon -> Set Picture Control -> Monochrome
  - Fuji XT-3 -> Menu -> IQ -> Film Simulation -> B (Monochrome)
  - (older) iPhone
  - (newwer) iPhone

Take three b/w photographs with filters in front of the lens.

(If you know exposures and know how to use a manual camera, try to get a reading with one of the filters and keep the settings for aperture/shutter speed the same. Otherwise auto-exposure should work ok.)

Take a b/w photograph with red filter over the lens

Q: what does the red filter do? Look at the red rose.
Take a b/w photograph with green filter over the lens

Q: what does the green filter do? Look at the leaves of the rose.
Take a b/w photograph with blue filter over the lens

Q: why is the cable always white?

Make sure you name the files so that you know which one is taken with the red, green, and blue filter

Open the photos in photoshop and put each of the b/w photos in a different layer. You can do this manually but here is a faster way to do it.

File -> Scripts -> Load Files into Stack

Select/highlight three black and white files

Make sure you keep track which one was shot with the red, green, and blue filter
Here, I renamed the layers to "red" "green" and "blue"
Optional: Select/highlight all three layers and align the images using photoshop's align tool

Edit -> Auto Align Layers
Click on each of the layers representing red, green, and blue

Choose the channel that the layer should represent (eg. R)
Change the blending mode to "Screen"

Completed image:

"An unrendered color photo would appear pale, almost ghostly - nothing like normal human vision because it represents only what is captured by the sensitivities of the image-capturing device, rather than the perceptions formed by human sight" (Lehmann from Color Goes Electric)

By using an unrenderd photo, it will allow us to color correct/grade without the influence of rendering that already takes into account things such as memory color (red of tomato, green of grass), preferences of people (tan of skin) and physiological effects of perception (white paper under yellow light).

From Color Goes Electric by Claire Lehmann:

This image is the property of Eastman Kodak Co. or its successors.

Roe Ethridge. Thanksgiving 1984. 2009

Tips/suggestions

Adjust each of the orignal red/green/blue layers so that they have rich tonality.

This (blue) layer is too light. Correct with adjustment layer + clipping mask
Fix so that each layer has black black and white whites. It would be easier to color correct later

With the use of adjustment + clipping mask, blue layer has blacks now...

fix for all red/green/blue layer so that it is rich in tonality

Three point correction

Before

In the Curves adjustment layer, double click on the white point tool. Select the highlight color (I prefer slightly darker white)

You just loaded the highlight target color. (You don't have to save the target color). Click on the image where it should be that highlight color? (eg. the whitest part of the image)

What you did was to move the color of the area to the color (white) you selected.

Load the desired color with the black point (say neutral black).

With the black point tool, you can move the dark area you select to the neutral black.

Repeat this for middle gray.

After

Notes

Color Grading with Grading Maps

When you want tn creatively introduce colors that are not in the original photographs.

Solid color + blending mode + opacity

Gradient maps + blending mode

Apply gradient map adjustment layer

Click on gradient to open gradient editor

Notes

Now what?

Part 1: Start with the exercise of creating color from three b/w images.
- There are many reason why our process will only be an approximation. (You can present on that if you'd like!)
Part 2: Openended. Then you can expand or stray away from this to investigage other questions related to color.
Black and white to color. It's interesting when it fails?
- Time/Movement: when things move between shots, motion rendered colorfully
Aesthetic exploration
- Past student work
- Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky [photographs][exhibition main][making]
- Florian Maier-Aichen [article]
- James Welling's hexachromes
  - twitter conversation
    " take a series of time lapse photos, colour each one with a different hue using colours from the spectrum of light, then recombine them. The colour of each pixel depends on how its brightness changed over time."
    
    "James Welling did the same thing in his 'Hexachromes' series from 2006. He used the passage of time and gels to reveal a spectrum of colors. Florian Maier Aichen (Welling's student) also uses the same technique in many of his photographs."
What if you critically compare the photos you get in color (jpg, or RAW) with the real world.
What if you focus on the idea of memory colors to create an image that is more true to your personal memory?
Think about the process of technically reproducing color. How is it different than prior creation of color?
The color you get is in some way very unprocessed/unmediated. You get access to stages before it becomes consumed as color. You also get access to what color technology was like before it was standardized.
- Create your own reference photographs (preferences, taste, politics, race)
- Create color photos that represent colors from 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s
- Research and report on rendering errors and more contemporary examples (Smart/iPhones seem to fail in interesting ways in Portrait mode or night mode).
Colorizing b/w photos using machine learning.
- Photoshop or many other machine learning based tools has a colorization model ready to use
  
  You can try it yourself. You can also research and think through the problems and present us your research. Think critically! What color photographs are they trained on? What are the implications? Can you turn that critical observation into a work of art that reveals that mechanism?
What used to be whole/contiguous/numerous is no longer whole/contiguous/numerous
- Things becoming Discrete. Digitization in general. Sound, speach (Guttenberg's printing press), color, movment (sequence of frames) ...etc.
- Pointilist paintings, Chuck Close
- Idea of "layering" and "sequencing" to create a whole. [Tokyo Nobody by Masataka Nakano][Michael Wesley's months long exposure photos]
- Timelapse photography, slitscan

FYI. You can get FITS raw images from the Hubble space telescope from different color spectrum and following the instructions, color the images

Notes