Photography Basics – The Tricolor Effect
by Mickey Rountree
Back in the 70’s and 80’s we used to produce a tricolor effect by either making a triple exposure on one frame of film with pure red, pure blue and pure green filters, or by using a “Harris Shutter” (see below) which acted as both a holder for the three filters and as a shutter during a long exposure. I did the effect both in 35mm and on 4×5 film, but figuring out the proper exposure for the three exposures and the filter factors for each color was pretty tedious.https://www.lightstalking.com/harris-shutter-effect/In the tricolor effect different parts of an image with subject movement show up as different colors. Parts of the image with no movement have normal color, due to the fact that in the RGB color model equal parts of red, green and blue produce white, or normal white balance.
Back in the 70’s and 80’s we used to produce a tricolor effect by either making a triple exposure on one frame of film with pure red, pure blue and pure green filters, or by using a “Harris Shutter” (see below) which acted as both a holder for the three filters and as a shutter during a long exposure. I did the effect both in 35mm and on 4×5 film, but figuring out the proper exposure for the three exposures and the filter factors for each color was pretty tedious.https://www.lightstalking.com/harris-shutter-effect/In the tricolor effect different parts of an image with subject movement show up as different colors. Parts of the image with no movement have normal color, due to the fact that in the RGB color model equal parts of red, green and blue produce white, or normal white balance.In Lightroom select three similar images with some movement. Right click, choose edit in and select open as layers in Photoshop.
With the three images opened as layers in Photoshop, select the top layer and double click on the light side of the layer icon and layer styles will open.
When you have made the three layer adjustments, go to layer/flatten image. From here you can continue editing just like you would any image.
Here are a few examples, ranging from subtle to extreme depending on the amount of movement, and how much of the image is stationary, or at least has a lot of overlap.
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