Color Balance and Colorize

- [Instructor] In this chapter, we'll look at how we'll look at how to makeadjustments to photographs in GIMP to make adjustments to photographs in GIMP. and we'll see how to work withcolor, brightness and detail We'll see how to work with color, brightness, and detail, as well as how to remove damage and unwanted elements from photos. And we'll begin by looking at We'll begin by looking at how to use how to use the color balanceand colorize commands. the Color Balance and Colorize commands. In the first exercise file for this movie, we have this photograph of some fruit and it's a nice photo, but those blueberries Now, it's a nice photo, but those blueberries are alittle more purple than blue are a little more purple than blue and the strawberries are really saturated. Let's say we wanted to address that and also try to add some contrast in the kiwis.

Since those are all in the darkest part of the image, we might be able to use Color Balance for that. so I'll open color balance bychoosing colors, color balance I'll open Color Balance by choosing Colors, Color Balance. and notice in the dialogue box Notice in the dialogue box that I can target shadows, midtones, or highlights. and for each of those three areas, For each of those three areas, I can adjust colors with these sliders. I can shift the balance between opposites like cyan and red, magenta and green, magenta and green and yellow and blue. So I'll start by targeting the shadows, I'll start by targeting the shadows and take some magenta out by dragging the slider towards green.

Right about there looks pretty good. Notice how that lightened up the berries, made them less purple, and gave them a bit more contrast. Then to add some contrast to the kiwis, I'll target I'll target the mid tones the midtones and drag yellow, blue slider towards blue. and drag the yellow-blueslider towards blue. And I can click the preview check box I can click the preview checkbox to see the before and after of the whole image. If I want to reset the sliders that I'm currently using, I can click Reset Range, or to reset all the sliders or to reset all the sliders for highlights, midtones, and shadows, I can click this reset button, but I like this change, so I'll click OK.

So that's color balance. That's Color Balance. Colorize, as it's name suggests, is good for completely changing the colors in an image. and you can make lots of interesting looks You can make lots of interesting looks, including duotone and monotone effects. For example, in our other exercise file of the car, We're going to choose Colors, Colorize, and immediately you can see the effect because the preview button here is checked. In this dialogue box, we have sliders In this dialogue box we have sliders for hue, saturation, and lightness.

Hue starts out at cyan and, going to the left, it turns to green, then yellow, and then red. On the right side, it goes from blue, to purple, it goes from blue to purple to magenta, and then back to red. The saturation slider can make images go can make images go frompure saturated colors from pure saturated colors all the way to gray.

And lightness Lightness goes all the way from pure white goes all the way from pure white to black to black and all values in between. and all values in between. So, for example to createa sepia monotone effect, For example, to create a sepia monotone effect, I can set the lightness to .5, hue to .1, and saturation to .4, and I get a pretty decent sepia effect.

Or, I can make a duotone effect by resetting the lightness to zero and choosing any hue value. So with color balance and colorize, With Color Balance and Colorize, you can make all kinds of adjustments to a photo, from subtle improvements to contrast to wholesale replacements of color throughout the image.