Surreal Color Process Revealed
One of my favorite photographic quotes came from Alfred Stieglitz…
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
And it’s the essence of this quote that has inspired my “Surreal Color” series. A fellow photographer asked me about the process I use, and so I thought I’d share it with my Medium readers.
I start out with a subject of muted, monochromatic, virtually nonexistent color. The color isn’t immediately apparent, but I know it’s there in it’s latent state, just like the latent image on a negative that’s eventually revealed through processing.
Tree bark is one of my favorites subjects; in it, I can envision enormous color potential. But any image that is seemingly void of color can be a worthy candidate.
Once the image is captured, and this can be on my iPhone or my full-frame DSLR, I bring it into Adobe Camera RAW (Lightroom works just as well) and adjust the white balance to make it as neutral overall as I can. I then open it in Photoshop, often as a smart object layer to preserve the Camera RAW editing capability. Working from RAW files is best, but not essential. Some of my best results have come from sRGB JPEGs from my iPhone.
Once in Photoshop, I convert the image to the L*a*b color space (Mode > L*a*b* Color). I now have a space to work with that is not bound by the color gamut of ICC profiles such as sRGB, Adobe 98, or even ProPhoto (which is enormous). Here is where the magic happens.
First I start by adding a Hue/Saturation adjust layer, change the blend mode to Multiply, and uncheck the “L” channel. I could accomplish exactly the same thing with any adjustment layer, but this one gives me some nice sliders to play with to make subtle changes. By unchecking the L channel, I am working directly with color, and not affecting contrast, shape or exposure in any way.
If this layer alone doesn’t give me the volume of color I’m looking for, I might add a curves layer, again unchecking the L channel. I then increase the steepness of the a and b curves, ensuring that the center of the curve passes through the 0,0 point on the grid to maintain neutrality. “Auto” often works nicely, but it’s important to drag the center point of the resulting curves back to the 0,0 point on the grid afterwards.
The best way to ensure a full spectrum of colors is by adjusting the white balance which can be done by double-clicking on the smart object layer. But there’s also another way.
When placed below the Curves and Hue/Saturation layers, a Color Balance adjustment layer can work wonders in rebalancing the shadows, midtones and highlights to pull out as much color as possible. As with any image, any color cast will mask other potential hues from coming through.
There is of course no limit to what one can do in this color space by using additional layers and blend modes. But these three — Color Balance , Hue/Saturation and Curves— are my go-to tools. I like to keep the processing as simple as possible for good reason.
The etymology of the word “surrealism” translates to “beyond realism”, coined c. 1917 in France by Guillaume Apollinaire. My goal is to keep the image as faithful to the original as possible while revealing its inner beauty, making it “more real than reality”.
