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Thursday, May 3, 2007

Improve your photos with classic painting color palettes

How to use Photoshop's "Match Color" tool with classic paintings by the old masters to make your digital photos pop.

I keep a directory of about 30 of my favorite paintings and anytime I need to do color correction, I just scan through them to find the one that gives the photo I'm working on the best look. This technique can be used in other ways. For example, use the color from a scanned-in 1970's Kodachrome snapshot to give a recent photo a vintage look. Need to make a picture more menacing? Use the color from a picture of a storm.

Link (Via Lifehacker)

Reader comment:

Philippe Van Lieu says:

(Click on thumbnail for enlargement) Hey Mark, I saw this post and felt I should chime in on my own similar coloring technique. This is a technique I kinda stumbled upon when trying to limit the colors in a picture by borrowing the colors used in a source picture. What generally has worked for me was:
1. I would find a picture which has colors I like, and then convert it to Indexed Color mode. By doing so I can get the 3 to 256 colors Photoshop picks and save them as a .ACT palette file (via Palette > Custom > Save...)
2. Next, I take the image I want to convert and resize it to something huge, if it isn't already huge. Generally one side would be say 6000 pixels or so if that side was originally 1800.
3. I would then convert the new picture to Indexed Color mode as well. But instead of letting Photoshop choose my colors, I'll load in the .ACT palette file I created earlier.
4. Afterwards, I'll switch the converted image to RGB mode and shrink the image back down to whatever size I want.
It's a bit more of a lengthy process and probably uses up more time and memory to process, but I feel it does create some interesting, if not superior, end effects. For example, if you really want to mute out red out of your picture, then find a source picture with little to no reds in it, and then use this technique. I've provided a link below to an example which shows that it works. Now in the right hands, this technique can really help transfer the coloring effects of one picture to your own. I use it a lot and people love it!

posted by Mark Frauenfelder at 10:23:39 PM permalink | Other blogs' comments

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