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Archive 2014 · Memory colors?

  
 
Beluha
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Memory colors?


Hello.
As I was told about one professional, that during photo processing one should consider the way brain sees the colors. As example he mentioned that brain better recognized night, when it has dark blue hue. All the artificial lights should have orange-green touches.
I was looking all over google for entire day, however dint find much information regarding current topic of memory colors.
Could anyone suggest links, books, authors?
Regards!



Feb 07, 2014 at 05:13 AM
RustyBug
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Memory colors?


No specific recommendation ... a good art book will dig into the physchological, philosophical and physiological response to color and the perceptual aspects they contain.

This is usually a component that bores most folks to tears as they want to "make art" sooner and study the science part later (or never) as people rush past it to get to the "real art" stuff. I think Kodak put out a book many years ago on the subject, but it may have been mostly about mood as it pertains to color. Admittedly, I rushed through it back then to get to making pretty pics instead of striving to improve my understanding.






Feb 07, 2014 at 05:04 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Memory colors?


Beluha wrote:
Hello.
As I was told about one professional, that during photo processing one should consider the way brain sees the colors. As example he mentioned that brain better recognized night, when it has dark blue hue. All the artificial lights should have orange-green touches.
I was looking all over google for entire day, however dint find much information regarding current topic of memory colors.
Could anyone suggest links, books, authors?
Regards!



I think this is mostly BS myself. Even if there is a little truth to it, it doesn't matter. Edit to your liking and publish. That's it, best advice anyone could give or get IMO.



Feb 08, 2014 at 12:27 AM
EB-1
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Memory colors?


Some of the most memorable photos ever are in B&W. Composition and subject matter are paramount. I'm not sure what is meant by orange/green lights. Make sure to profile your cameras if accurate color is needed.

EBH



Feb 08, 2014 at 09:15 AM
Eyeball
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Memory colors?


I would consider this an "advanced" and more subtle topic for photographers and post-processors but I do find it interesting. It's the kind of thing that you can start to consider when you are ready to take your images that last 5% from "fantastic" to "perfect".

In terms of what the OP is mentioning regarding "memory colors" or our tendency to associate certain colors with certain types of lighting or times of day, I certainly feel that that bias exists to some extent and I think there is some biological evidence to back that up.

The combination of our eyes and brains, for example, has the ability to do quite a bit of "auto white balance" but this ability has its limits (a scene lit with strong red light is going to look red) and it's possible to consciously note differences in color temperature when it varies significantly within the same scene (full sun vs. shade).

How much of our expectation of certain color biases for certain settings is experiential vs. biological or genetic is an interesting question. I have seen some people write that our expectation for warm lighting indoors is influenced by our being accustomed to incandescent lighting. I have read others implying that it could have influences going all the way back to when man started using fire.

There are also biological aspects that may have an impact - the eye/brain tendency to lose all but blue sensitivity as luminance decreases.

Here are some related links you might find interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kruithof_curve

Can those biases be taken advantage of for our photography and post-processing? Sure. I can certainly see favoring a warm white balance or warm lighting to give a scene a more early-morning/late-evening feel. I think favoring warm white balance for certain indoor shots also can help inject a "homey" feel.

Many believe that white balance can also have an impact in terms of depth clues (an impression of "3D"). Since the atmosphere has a tendency to filter certain wavelengths, we become accustomed at some level to distant things having a bluish tint vs. closer things that are warmer. John Paul Caponigro emphasizes this warm/cool effect in some of his landscape post-processing tutorials along with adjustments to contrast, saturation, and brightness. Here is a link to a study that looked into the warm/cool depth perception thing a little more scientifically:

http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~cmg/content/papers/tech200617/tech200617.pdf

Then there are also cultural biases for color, that may be important to take into consideration for things like commercial and product photography and may even come into play for portraits.

Associations in the western world for things like red=bad, green=good are not necessarily global. In some countries and cultures, these types of associations can be different or even reversed. A yellow/orange/tan skin color that is seen to have positive connotations in one culture can have negative connotations in another.

Here's another link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_psychology

So yes, I think color can certainly have an impact on the message that you are sending with an image and you may have the ability to adjust that message using color to some extent during the shoot or during post-processing.







Feb 08, 2014 at 01:14 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Memory colors?


I agree but think it's all natural and doesn't need or warrant scientific breakdown. Thus my comment "Edit to your liking and publish. That's it…"





Feb 08, 2014 at 05:03 PM
Mirek Elsner
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Memory colors?


Bifurcator wrote:
I agree but think it's all natural and doesn't need or warrant scientific breakdown. Thus my comment "Edit to your liking and publish. That's it…"




I think it is always good to understand how people perceive colors, because my perception may be abnormal (due to color blindness, for example).



Feb 08, 2014 at 05:19 PM
Bifurcator
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Memory colors?


Yeah, maybe… if you can believe any of it. I guess most of it is BS. Some guy calling himself a scientist or research analyst does a study of 15 people and claims to know something when in fact color association is cultural, dependent on geographical location, dependent on altitude, affected by each person's individual experiences, diet, brain chemistry, and all (ALL) subject to change from hour to hour, week to week, month to mont, etc..

And those are just a few of the relational interdependencies I came up with in 20 seconds of thought - I'm sure there's a lot more!

Sure, I think it's an interesting topic too - but most BS topics are - because there's soooooo much room for speculation and the introduction of anecdotal or pseudo-science. Metaphysical topics especially come to mind here.



Feb 08, 2014 at 05:45 PM
RustyBug
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Memory colors?


Well, whenever I see warmly toned sidelighting I tend to think the image was shot in either early morning or late in the day.

It is based on the "memory" of having seeing that color of light at those times of day. Going into the mountains and being on the opposite side from the sun blocks those warm tones and instead, the lighting is cool from the overhead sky (but that wouldn't be side lighting). I didn't live around the mountains, so the notion of cool morning light was a bit foreign to me until I experienced/studied it a bit to understand why it would be that way.

In that manner, an expectation of what the color represents can be inconsistent from one region to another (east side vs. west side of the mountain)... but it still has a rational rooted in the human experience. The more we experience, the more we have to draw on (our memory) as to what the color ... MAY ... correlate to.

One thing I've come to notice is that I've never thrown a blue snowball or seen blue tree bark. When we are that close to the snow or tree, our eye/brain accommodates for color. However, when we look off in the distance, the color of the shadows can look blue. Walk on over grab some snow, and it'll not be blue. Thus, we learn to associate blue/cool with distance. The sky is distant, the ocean is distant and as the water reflects the distant sky with its blue color the association of blue/distant is reinforced in a natural realm.

From that natural experience, people (typically) learn to associate cool with distant. Does this hold true, hard & fast, 100% ... nope, but it can be useful and has been embraced for millenium by painters throughout the ages to understand / apply the tenets of natural color perception to assist in the conveyance of their message. Do we have to follow those tenets ... nope. But, can they be helpful, some would argue yes, others not so much. Personally, I think it is valuable to at least understand them to a degree that you can use them to your advantage at your discretion ... which takes us full circle to Bif's perspective @ make it how you want it, but for some, it can be helpful to know WHY you want to make it a certain way to help harmonize rather than contradict your intended mood/message.



Feb 08, 2014 at 07:27 PM
Beluha
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Memory colors?


I guess I can take a lot from expanding conversation. Thank you guys.

Eyeball, thank you very much for expanded answer and useful links.



Feb 09, 2014 at 11:15 AM
Alan321
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Memory colors?


I don't need my photos to be exactly like what I photographed but I do want them to be at least pluasible. A green sky would not match my experience so far and would not be plausible. If I can't make the leap to it being an arty shot then it just looks like crap.

When I see buildings lit up at night they are generally lit with high pressure sodium lamps (orange cast) from the outside and flouoros (often greenish but not as green as HPS are orange) inside. So to have at least some of that orange in the photo looks more realistic than turning the image into a daylight shot with odd shadows.

Also, when I see dark dark red night skies in photos I know from my own experience that it is more likely a camera sensor thermal issue rather than a genuinely red sky. Removing that red and making it a very dark blue helps a lot to satisfy my expectation and then I can better appreciate the rest of the photo.

These are example of colour memories that influence what I expect to see and therefore what I am willing to accept - until I see more of the world and develop new colour memories or change those I have.



Feb 18, 2014 at 09:22 AM





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