Color Adjustment Is Needed After You Adjust Brightness

The basics of how you edit color is as follows. It’s very simple.

1. If you increase brightness, you need to increase color

2. If you decrease brightness, you need to decrease color

After you adjust the brightness, if you see your photo becomes brighter, just increase the color. If you see your photo darker, just decrease the color.

Relationship Between Color and Brightness

Color Changes Together With Brightness

Let us consider this under different conditions

1. LOCATION

You often see such a scenery like the photo below. Sunshine is flooding the leaves on the left side and you can see the light color of the leaves. While shaded part show deep colored leaves.

2. WEATHER

Next, let us think about the color of maple leaves on a sunny day and the leaves on a cloudy day. If there is a clear sky, the color of some leaves are very vivid while others are pale.

On a cloudy day, the color of some leaves are dull while others are deep.

3. TIME

Once again, please check the picture. You can see vivid colored leaves and roads in daytime

At night, you can see dull colored leaves and roads. The color can not be seen clearly.

What do you think about color? Color is vivid in bright places. But, in dark places, it is dull.

Color Is Always Changing Together With Brightness

When brightness changes from dark to bright, color changes from dull to vivid.

In opposite, when brightness changes from bright to dark, color changes from vivid to dull.

In the digital imaging world, of course, it is same as the real world. So after you adjust brightness, color also changes and the appearance of anything will also change. So if you change brightness, basically, you need to adjust color according to basics.

1. If you increase brightness, you need to increase color

2. If you decrease brightness, you need to decrease color.

This is a natural thing. You can not see dull color in sunny days. You can not see vivid color at night.

Color Adds Reality And Energy

I took a photo of this figure in an exhibition. But its color is darker than the real figure.

So I increased the brightness and the color as I am explaining until now. The figure becomes bright and vivid. It is almost close to the real one.

Can you feel something from bright and vivid color of this fugre? Yes, color adds reality and energy.

Here is another example. You can see a slice of fruits on the plate.

I just increased the brightness and color.

The color is stimulating. It is very attractive and encourages us to eat. That is a kind of power that brightness has.

In contrast, if you remove color, the photo will be not realistic. It reminds us of the past or ancient art image.

Now, I will explain basics first. After you learn them, you can change brightness and color as you wish.

Let’s move on to the next chapter, EDIT YOUR PHOTO!

N E X T

EDIT YOUR PHOTO

HANG IN THERE!