Color Match

[schnee]

I was recently directed to an interesting technique using PhotoShop’s “Color Match” tool. You all probably already knew about this, but I didn’t.

At the risk of potentially giving away a tool that could garner a couple of votes, would this be “legal” in Farktography? Even if it isn’t, it opens up some interesting possibilities.

[Elsinore]

I think I’d have to know what it did to know if it’s in keeping with the rules. I have no idea what it is/what it does–GIMP doesn’t have anything like that (or if it does, it’s called something different).

[Analogy]

It looks like it basically tries to shift the colors in the image toward a different color you specify. It’s a little bit selective in that different colors get shifted different ways that you specify, but it’s not completely selective in that you’re not manually masking, and all instances of a particular color get shifted the same way. I wouldn’t think it would be too objectionable.

[monkeybort]

i’m ok with it – it’s not masked or selective or anything so i think that’s fine.

along those lines – did we ever make a decision about digital cross processing? i think we did but i can’t remember what it was.

[Curious]

i’m seen demos of this other places and, well you know me. the demos made it seem like more of an area rather than the whole image treatment. that could be because it’s used to enhance an area.

but on the plus side it does seem to (loosely) fit in the color balance category.

[Elsinore]

Ah ok, if it’s shifting colors without being selective/area masked, it sounds fine.

‘bort, I *think* we decided digital cross processing was ok as long as it was evenly across the image since it was similar to color/white balance shifts. I could be wrong, but that would be my vote on it anyway.

[Analogy]

Sure you can use it to, for example, selectively enhance the sky by saying “add 10% lightness and 20% saturation to anything that’s blue.” You’re not masking anything, but you’re applying an enhancement only to the blues in the image. Of course it will also pick up anything else in your picture that happens to be blue, so it might not be as selective as you might want it to be.

[Elsinore]

Sounds a lot like the Hue/Lightness/Saturation tool in GIMP. You can tweak the colors, but like Analogy mentioned, it affects any instance of that color in the photo. I think it’s fair since it affects the entire photo.

[millera9]

Sounds a lot like the Hue/Lightness/Saturation tool in GIMP. You can tweak the colors, but like Analogy mentioned, it affects any instance of that color in the photo. I think it’s fair since it affects the entire photo.

I’m gonna disagree on this one. Maybe I’m not understanding the tool properly though. From what I just read, it sounds like you can select a specific color and edit it without affecting the rest of the image. Elsinore, wouldn’t that be akin to using The Gimp’s color manipulation to, for example, desaturate everything in an image except blues? I mean, I suppose the tool itself applies to the whole image, but it is targeted at a specific part/color of the image, not the whole thing. Seems against the rules to me…

/Please correct me if I’ve misunderstood the process, I don’t have PS so maybe I’m totally wrong here.

[schnee]

I’m not sure how it works either, but I don’t think it is specific to one particular color. It somehow creates a statistical description of the source image and applies those stats to the target image. This tutorial gives a little more information.

[sleeping]

“Match color” in Photoshop is not the same thing as “selective color”, which is the tool that allows you to globally modify specific colors in an image (or rather, one of them, Photoshop has several ways of doing just about anything). What “Match color” does is to take the color information from one image, and uses it to modify the colors in a second image to match.

[millera9]

Thanks for posting that schnee, their examples make a lot more sense to me than the description did.

It still seems like too much post-processing to me. Seems like it would fit into the category of selective color stuff (i.e. if you can do it in-camera, go for it, but it’s out-of-bounds otherwise).

This actually brings up a good farktographic philosophy question: Is the intent of the contests to compare realistic photos, or is there some room for the creation of artistic interpretations of reality? This tool can be used to create both. schnee‘s examples (first post) are very realistic looking. They are only mildly adjusted. The examples from the tutorial, however, are drastically unrealistic. Is that a problem?

[linguine]

I think I have to agree with miller on this, some of the things that this tool can do seem to be a little high on the photoshop side of things.

[schnee]

if you can do it in-camera, go for it, but it’s out-of-bounds otherwise

Right. That’s the general guideline for The Rules and after this discussion, I’m on the “Match Color is not allowed” side of the fence.

Still, a cool tool for non-Farktography work.

[Elsinore]

Ya know, I hadn’t even noticed schnee’s examples in his first post–duh me. Yeah, that’s probably beyond the scope/spirit of the Farktography rules. Nifty tool, though!

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