Photography Basics – Color Grading Part 3

by Mickey Rountree

Color Grading refers to adjusting colors and tones in your image to alter the mood and feel of your image. Color grading is used heavily in the movie and TV industry to alter mood, but also to create a consistent visual style. It is not the same as color balance and you should correct your color balance before doing your color grading. Color grading can be so subtle that it is hardly noticeable or so extreme that is obvious that colors are manipulated and not totally realistic.

When these articles are converted to PDF and sized for the newsletter, the resolution and quality of the images is seriously degraded. If you would like to read the article and see the images as I did, you can see this article on my website at this link.

https://mickeyrountree.smugmug.com/Articles/Basic-Photography-Series/

I’ve written about color grading in Lightroom or Camera Raw, and using lookup tables in Photoshop and now I’ll cover a third option. Infinite Color is a plugin for Photoshop that installs a panel that creates random color grading looks. You can get more information at their website:

https://infinitecolorpanel.com/

Clicking on Infinite Color opens a control panel. Clicking on “create” generates a new look in a group that has adjustments for color, curves, lookup tables and gradient. Because this is all in a group, you can change the opacity and apply masks to the group and not have to adjust or mask each layer individually. There is also a slider for intensity. I tend to leave this around the midpoint. Every click on the “Create” button generates a new random look. If you prefer a previous look you can go back a step with Ctrl-Z or use the history panel. When you find a look you like you can save it as a preset within the Infinite Color control panel.

Here is one original image and several looks I created by clicking on create button. Most of these seem pretty extreme, but keep in mind you can dial down the opacity of the group to make the effect much subtler.

Here is the original image without Infinite Color.

Here is the first look at 100% which is much too strong and definitely overpowers the skin tones. Dialed down to 25% it’s so subtle you might not notice, but it’s there and does create a different look.

Here’s a different look at 100% and then dialed down to 30%.

Here’s a different look at 100% and then dialed down to 35%. Unless you’re a big Wizard of Oz fan, skip green color grading on skin!

One of the advantages of the random results is a constant supply of fresh looks, With other color grading techniques it is all too easy to find a look you like and then use it on every image. That may create your signature look, or it may just become boring. That can be a tough call, but it’s your decision.

Photography Basics – Color Grading Part 3

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