Photographs are highly valued for the emotional effect they have on the viewer. There are several methods of managing an image’s properties that can create a mood or feeling and one among them is color tone. One could work on properties like color, composition, perspective or color tone to make beautiful pictures.
Importance of Color Tone
One of the prominent methods of setting the feel of a picture is setting its color tone. It’s true that there are quite enough ways to capture the feel right from the natural environment to a frame. But sometimes, working a little on the color tone of a frame can create stunningly effective and genuinely convincing pictures. Color tone is an important aspect of photography that students learn to handle at a photography training institute.
Color tone is the intensity of a color from its lightest to the darkest part in an image. Controlling specific color tones to bring a particular warmth of view can affect the measure at which it imposes itself on the viewer. This is how the concept could be described in a less technical manner as is learned in photography training courses.
Colors or hues (which is how we call the original color in art) have varying intensity in a frame depending on the environment it is shot in. It is well-known that hues can directly have different impressions on people. So are there warm and cool colors which arouses and calms the viewers respectively. By adding a neutral color to any color, the intensity of the color can be reduced without changing the hue itself. This is a way of controlling the tone of an image.
The importance of color tone is evident to photography enthusiasts and students at photography colleges. The manner of setting color tones of different colors can be a matter of interest when you want to create a highly effective picture.
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Setting Red Color Tones
Red is considered as a warm color. At the highest intensity, red is aggressive and is the hottest color of all. It is the color that is associated to feelings of love, cheer, festivity, joy and prosperity. Setting a red color at lighter tones can give impressions of tenderness and tender love, friendship, and even romance! It could give a visual warmth that can inspire positive action.
On the other hand, setting red to darker tones can invoke a looming feeling of danger or sadness, make people feel insecure and disturb one’s tranquillity. It’s a perfect setting for depicting crisis of any sort.
Setting Blue Color Tones
Blue brings the sky into memory in an instant. Blue also denotes water. It is related to feelings of calmness, sophistication and coolness, a trait attributed to mature and wise thinking. The lighter the blue color tone is set to, the more it exudes feelings of elegance, fantasy and gentleness. With its darker tones, the color can suggest secrecy, mystery, sadness, gloom and loneliness.
Setting Yellow Color Tones
Yellow and orange are considered as colors of vigour. It’s the color that constitutes sunlight and is the hue that comes to mind while imagining the sunrise or sunset. Yellow is also the color that suggests clarity and richness (as with its presence in gold).
At its lighter tones, it induces feelings of warmth, kindness, friendliness and hope. Intense or dark tones of yellow can denote degradation, misery and bad health.
Setting Black & White Color Tones
Part of a monochrome scheme which naturally depicts depth, black and white are extremes of a grey palette. With other color details missing, black & white naturally induces feelings of mystery, nostalgia and suspense. It can denote death, horror and antiquity too. The remarkable thing about black & white is that it also is attributed to class and sophistication.
The major advantage and purpose of black & white color scheme is to show depth of the subject in the frame. Modernity has tagged the property of classiness and the state of being premier to the black & white color scheme. The difference in grey shade intensity can suggest varying levels of sophistication and can at times present shadow and color progression vividly.
Thus, color tones can be smartly used to create the desired expression and impact in a picture. It’s only a matter of practice to mastery that will give the photographer the edge in crafting images that conveys content perfectly.