Project 6: Measuring Colour.

In this project the focus is on how we measure colour in photography, I've already looked at how the camera captures colour and how this is measured both in the camera and on the computer screen and you may think that measuring colour is just the same principle but actually it isn't as i first assumed.

The camera measures colour by calculating the amount of red,green and blue that is present in an area but this isn't how the human eye evaluates colour, we understand it in 3 different ways which are-

1. Hue- this is when we look at a colour and decide which of the primary colours is most dominate. It's measured in degrees as if the colour of the spectrum are arranged around a circle with red at the top 0 degrees.
2. Saturation- this is how rich the colour appears and is measured as a percentage with 0 meaning no colour is present and 100 meaning completely saturated.
3. Brightness- clear this is how bright the colour appears, it's measured like saturation as a percentage but in this case 0 equals black while 100 equals white.

This group of measurement is found in the info palette in photoshop under the title HSB usually nearby to the RGB reading, now that i know this the first thing to do is look at the measurements produced from my personal colour chart i made in project 5.

What you can see above are the RGB and HSB values of each individual square, what this shows is that i have the understanding to be able to take these readings from a simple chart but next you're asked to take this process a little further and collect readings from three of your own shots containing neutral colours, skin tones and finally vegetation.

Neutral Colours.

I took the reading in this first shot from the metal work of the bird.

• R-126, G-133, B-149
• H-222, S-15%, B-58%
  

Sky

• R-116, G-139, B-180
• H-218, S-36%, B-71%
  
  

Skin Tones.

Skin

• R-126, G-80, B-57
• H-20, S-55%, B-49%
  

Marque

• R-179, G-163, B-129
• H-41, S-28%, B-70%
  
  
  

Vegetation.

Corn

• R-121, G-125, B-111
• H-77, S-11%, B-49%

Bird

• R-61, G-60, B-55
• H-50, S-10%, B-24%
  
  
  

You're then asked to look at the neutral shot and consider whether the neutral colours are close to begin absolutely neutral which i don't feel they are. The reason for this is because it's a reflective surface it mirrors a little of the colour that surrounds it meaning a reading is never going to show it as completely neutral but our eyes tell us it is a neutral colour never the less. This fact is back up when you look at the RGB results because if it was neutral they'd be much higher and would all read the same but they quiet clear don't as a result of the landscape and the light.

When i compare the colours in the photos to my own colour chart and the OCA one on the course CD i see that the result tend to be closer to my own chart, this I'd expect because their taken to my personal preferences to colours. If some one else came along and shot the same scene at that moment they might set their camera completely different thus changing the way the colours would appear in the scene, like many parts of photograph colour as much as anything else is all a matter of chose by the photographer as to how it should appear this is why they are called Memory Colours.

I felt this project offered an interesting insight into how we consider colours without really thinking to much about what we are doing and i feel maybe a little more reading is needed for me to fully understand what I've just covered because i don't think this is some of my best project work to date.