A-Photo Mag

We see shadows all around us, in nature. The shadows are what help us see three dimensionally. To put that another way, the gradation from light to dark on the surfaces of objects helps us to see depth. We’ve covered that in another article with the example of a circle and a sphere, both represented on two dimensional paper. So, in the absence of shadows we see the world in a sort of two-dimensional way. That is not what shadow less lighting is all about by the way….just so you don’t get confused between the two.

By shadow less lighting, we refer to diffused light that does not cast a sharp shadow. Light that is not diffused, for example the flash light from a compact camera, casts a sharp shadow of the subject on the wall behind. That’s light that is NOT diffused. So what really causes this sharp shadow? Try this simple experiment – for this you will need a room with a bulb as well as a tube light. The bulb could well be a lamp light without a lamp shade. Now, switch on ONLY the bulb and hold your hand a few inches away from it. You see a shadow of your hand on the wall opposite. Next, switch off the bulb and switch on the tube light. Hold your hand near the tube light. No shadow! The bulb light is an example of light that is NOT diffused, and the tube light creates diffused light. The basic difference is – the bulb is a point light source (the light emanates from the filament of the bulb, which is pretty much a point source). The tube light on the other hand, is a diffused light source, meaning light does not emanate from any one point within the tube, but from all points on the surface of the tube, with equal intensity.

When you keep this simple idea of a tube and a bulb light in mind, you increase your control and understanding of diffused light, which is so often used in photography, especially in the studio environment. In reality, the tube light also creates a shadow, but a very soft one when compared to the point light source, the bulb. The shadows created by diffused light are much softer and thereby pleasing to the eyes. However, certain shoots call for the hard light of the bulb, the point light source. These may include a photo shoot that mimics the lighting from a spot light on a stage. So, let us not compartmentalize hard and soft lighting into good and bad categories, but rather get a better understanding on when and where each kind is required, and hone a better control over creating each kind of lighting artificially. In nature of course, the sun’s light is usually diffused by the clouds. However, on clear days when the clouds disappear, one can often see sharp shadows of people and objects, especially when the sun is high up at times like noon.

Correcting colors on an image is one of the most widely used applications of photo-correcting software. Let us take a closer look at how and why this can be done.

The truth is, that any digital camera, however much effort has been put into its color correction and white balance settings; creates a color cast under certain situations. This is thanks to the different ‘color temperatures’ of different kinds of lights.  For example, our everyday tube lights have a ‘cooler’ tone as compared to the ‘warm tone’ bulb lights from incandescent light sources. No auto white balance setting can be so perfect (at least not till today) that it can accommodate changes for a variety of light sources such as fluorescent, neon, bulb, tube light and daylight. Most cameras perform well under daylight. So what do you do when you get an image with a color cast? Well, you open Adobe Photoshop!

Check this image out for instance. The skin tones clearly tell you that it has a yellowish and unnatural tone. Well, we open the image in Photoshop, and then open the color corrections option. In fact it is called color balance in Photoshop, and you can reach this panel under IMAGE-ADJUST-COLOR BALANCE-

This shows you a sliding tool. In fact it shows you 3 sliding adjustments wherein you can adjust the red, green and blue tones - consequently adjusting their complimentary tones of Cyan, Magenta and Yellow respectively. Consider the image in question. We have declared that it has a markedly yellowish tone. This is obviously due to the fact that it was photographed under something like bulb light with the camera’s white balance set to daylight. Most compact camera users never fiddle with the camera’s white balance settings, and this is exactly what you can expect as a result. Anyway, we declare that it has a yellow tone simply by looking at the image.

Once you have the sliding tool open under the COLOR BALANCE option on Photoshop, we need to reduce the yellow. In other words, we increase the blue. Either way you look at it, it has the same effect on the image nevertheless. When we reduce the yellow (and a bit of red as well), the image begins to look much better - in fact we have adjusted it to clearly look much better, almost as if it were photographed under daylight -

 Do keep in mind that the color correction tools cannot have an effect over the exposure (or the brightness level) of the images. It simply replaces one color tone with another of your choice. However, the wrong color balance at times does seem to look like there is a problem with exposure.

Photoshop also has an auto color correct option. Look under IMAGE menu (IMAGE-ADJUST-AUTO COLOR). This works very well at times, but we have learned that one can get much better results by doing the correction manually using the above described process.