Chapter4.Color Me Badd: color correction for photographers

Chapter 4. Color Me Badd: color correction for photographers

Photo by Dave Moser

Exposure: 1/4

Focal Length: 270mm

Aperture Value: /2.8

The subtitle for this chapter is "Color Correction for Photographers," which invites the question "How is color correction for photographers different from color correction for anybody else?" Actually, it's quite a bit different, because photographers generally work in RGB or black and white. And in reality, digital photographers mostly work in RGB because, although we can manage to build reusable spacecraft and have GPS satellites orbiting in space so golfers here on earth know how far it is from their golf cart to the green, for some reason creating a color inkjet printer that prints a decent black-and-white print is still apparently beyond our grasp. Don't get me started. Anyway, this chapter isn't entirely about black-and-white prints, and now that I think about it, I'm sorry I brought it up in the first place. So forget I ever mentioned it, and let's talk about color correction. Why do we even need color correction? Honestly, it's a technology thing. Even with traditional film cameras, every photo needs some sort of color tweaking (either during processing or afterward in Elements), because if it didn't need some correction, we'd have about 20-something pages in this book that would be blank, and that would make my publisher pretty hopping mad. So, for the sake of sheer page count, let's all be glad that we don't live in an ideal world where every photo comes out perfect and 6-megapixel cameras are only 200 bucks and come with free 1-GB memory cards.