Fine Art Photography Blog

Fuji makes slide film in two renowned flavors: Velvia, for intensely colored landscape, and Provia, a more true to life but less break-taking color rendition. Before people debated whether or not Photoshop is cheating, photographers have been choosing their film ( and shutter speed, and aperture ) to suit their tastes. Galen Rowell famously praised Velvia, asking “Who wants to take dull pictures that will last a hundred years?”

Less people these days are using slide film; photography is a digital art now. And while the biggest influence on color saturation is still lighting, we use Photoshop instead of a favorite type of film and darkroom wizardry now. To that end, how does one recreate a digital Velvia?

There are a number of options, actually. Most people use the Hue / Saturation command. Like most approaches in life, this works in moderation, but will only get you so far. Anything beyond a small dose begins to look overly colorized, like a neon sign in Las Vegas or Disney Land. Curves offers the opposite extreme: a little too cumbersome in its power and flexibility, although it makes a good color balancing tool.

Beyond vivacious color, balance is an important part of a stunning visual impression. Read the rest of this entry »

Digital cameras are a lot like slide film, from the 35 mm days. With negatives you would expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights; slide film had a much narrower exposure latitude that would clip the highlights easily … much like today’s CCD or CMOS chip.

So, we find ourselves exposing for the highlights, checking the histogram when time allows, and avoiding overexposure like the plague. This doesn’t mean you should under-expose by habit, but when there are important highlights in a scene, you may be forced to underexpose much of your photo to retain detail in the brights.

Over-exposure can be the kiss of death, so when you “develop” an image in Photoshop, you don’t want to create the same problem in post. There are a number of ways to approach this, all involving selective edits. The Curves and Levels tools are a good start, but you can do better. Read the rest of this entry »