Basic Color Theory

Photography is about light.

Obvious statement, but let’s look at it in a little more details. For more scientific details you canclick herebut the short version is that light, which is what you are trying to capture in your images, has different wavelengths which renders it visually as different colors. The visual color range is something we are all very familiar and can be seen in a rainbow. This is also called the color spectrum.

The color spectrum, as seen above, shows the colors of a rainbow as they appear in their natural order. Now in art and photography these colors, and various combinations thereof, make up the scenes that we see and ultimately shoot. I am sure that you have heard people refer to the beautiful colors in an image. Again, it sounds like quite a plain and simple statement but in there somewhere lies a magical combination of colors that can either make or break your images. Before look at the combinations of colors that work well together, let’s look at a few basic color related terms. Some of these might seem quite basic but they they are still important to know and understand.

Primary Colors

The three primary colors are red, yellow and blue. They get mixed, in various combinations to make up other colors. These colors form an important part of photography and ones to pay attention to in your images and composition.

Secondary Colors

The secondary colors are orange, green and purple and are made up by combinations of the three primary colors.

• Orange = Yellow + Red
• Purple = Red + Blue
• Green = Blue + Yellow

Tertiary Colors

When you mix primary and secondary colors you get tertiary colors. Look at the color wheel on the right check these examples.

• Light Green = Yellow (primary) + Green (secondary)
• Dark Green = Blue (primary) + Green (secondary)

All of the colors mentioned above, primary, secondary, and tertiary, can all be represented in a circular fashion, or on a color wheel. The color wheel above give a great visual representation of how all the colors fit together. Now before we carry on to look at how to use color in your photographs just a quick word on a small word that sometimes causes a great deal of confusion – Hue.

The short version, before moving on, is that hue is basically just one of the colors on the color wheel. If you adjust the hue in Lightroom or Photoshop you are basically sliding the color towards on of those next to it on the color wheel. In the simple example below I have adjusted the hue of the blue channel in Lightroom.

The image on the left shows the original image which contains blue, a primary color. By now using the slider in Lightroom and moving it to one side, in this case to the left, I ended up with the second image in which the hue has been changed to a blue-green color. By moving the slider to the opposite side, right, the hue has been changed to the color on the other side of blue on the color wheel. In this case a blue-purple. Hue make sense? Try it for yourself by taking one of your images, open it in Lightroom, choose a color on the color slider and while keeping an eye on the color wheel, move the hue slider side to side. This is probably the easiest way to grasp hue and how it can play a part in your images.  Changing the hue changes the color.  Basically just follow the wheel.

Complimentary Colors

Moving on now to how combinations of all of these colors can help you to create striking images. By looking at the simplified color wheel on the right you can see that every primary color has an opposite or complimentary color. Each primary color has a complimentary color which, as the name says, compliments it and is located directly across from it on the color wheel.

The three primary colors and their corresponding complimentary colors are therefor:

• Red – Green
• Blue – Orange
• Yellow – Purple

Out of interest you will notice that a primary color’s complimentary color is made up by the secondary color of the other two primaries. (Check it out on the top color wheel.)

When used together, complimentary colors gives an image that something special.  This is something to keep in mind when composing your images. Look for complimentary or opposite colors to make the image stand out. One example of this can be seen in the wallpaper download of the Swainson’s Francolin where the bird’s red face is complimentary to the green grass around it.

As with anything in photography some rules should be bent and other broken.  When composing your images you don’t have to be too strict when working with complimentary colors.  I.e. they do not have to be directly across from each other on the wheel.

The example on the right was taken from David duChemin’s blog, which I follow religiously, and shows how the use of (almost) complimentary colors makes for a very striking image.  Blue and yellow are almost across from each other on the color wheel and shows how you can approach colors.  The image not only shows this, and very strong, basic composition, but also takes ys to the next color term.

Analogous Colors

This simply refers to colors that are in harmony.  These colors sit next to each other on the color wheel.  Look at the yellow image above.  The orange squiggly thing in the top left is orange and is therefor in harmony with the image as it sits next to yellow, or at least very close to, yellow on a color wheel.

Using analogous colors in your images will help you to create more subtle images and compositions compared to when you use complimentary colors where the contrast of the colors makes the image pop.

A few other colorful terms you might come across include the following.

Color Tint & Color Shade

A color shade refers to a color that is mixed with black.  In the top example you can see how the blue changes from pure blue to pitch black.  The original color, far left, was blue but from then on you are looking at various shades of blue.

A color tint refers to a color that is mixed with white.  In the bottom color bar you can see how the same blue, far left, change as it gets mixed with different degrees of white until it is completely gone, at which point you have pure white.

If you look at all the different shades and tints that you can create by mixing the original blue with black and white it becomes quite apparent that the possibilities are endless and the amounts of colors that ultimately make up the entire color spectrum is massive.  So many colors.  So many options.

Wow, kind of got carried away there but that should give you a pretty good idea on the basics of color.  At the end of the day it is not all that important to know the finer detail when you are out photographing but it will most definitely make a difference if you start looking at things like complimentary and analogous colors.  Try it and let me know how it works out.

A quick one on color filters.  Since the digital revolution not too many people still use the old fashioned filters, that you add to the front or back of your lens, from when we were shooting film.  The theory behind them have not changed so whether you use real filters or you add a color filter in your post processing the results should be the same.

The very very short version is this – filters will selectively let through or block certain wavelengths of light / color.  Opposite colors again come into play here.  Let’s use red and green.

• A red filter will lighten reds and darken greens.
• A green filter will lighten greens and darken reds.

Lighten the same color, darken the opposite.  Easy yes?  Will be doing a bit more on filters as I put together details an article on black and white.  More on that soon.

Anyway, that is about that.  Had a request to do a post on selective color during post processing – i.e. drop all the colors in an image but keep one or two.  Will be getting that up later this week  Let me know if there is ever anything specific you want to to add to the blog.

Time to go.  Until next time.

Gerry