How to adjust the high gray tone of photography

High-profile: High-profile works occupy most of the picture with white to light gray tone levels, plus a small amount of dark shadow tones. High-profile works give people a clear, pure and light feeling, but with the change of subject matter and environment, there will also be a feeling of desolation, emptiness and sadness.

Gray tone: the color purity is low, but the performance is dim. This tone is implicit and rich in connotation. It will also give people a sense of melancholy.

A Brief Talk on Photographic Tone (Control of Early Tone)

(1) camera

Most people learn photography from buying a camera, so skilled use of the camera is the basic requirement.

Pre-dark tone control: high tone, middle tone and dark tone can be expressed by the difference of exposure and side light. If exposure is used to control light and dark performance, it is recommended to skillfully use M file. If you use side light to express light and shade, you can try side light more. Use the light part to measure light to represent dark tones. Use the dark part to measure light, showing high profile.

Pre-soft and hard tone control: there is a "contrast" setting in the camera's photographing style, which can set different contrast according to different contents. The contrast of photos of different cameras is also different (here mostly refers to the clarity of photos). For example, Canon, which we often say, makes films like meat, and Nikon is sharper. Most people like movies with high definition, because the content is clear and the human eye will not be too tired. So now camera manufacturers are using technology to improve contrast, whether it is liquid crystal display or film quality, but they have lost delicate observation and performance. For example, shooting a soft-key movie will look awkward. Digital camera's ability to control the soft and hard contrast of tone is very low, which is only the performance of local contrast and the control of image quality, not to mention the soft and hard performance of tone, so it is mostly compensated by digital post-stage.

Pre-color tone control: film friends who pay attention to the performance of pre-color tone can express color tone by controlling color temperature, white balance and saturation. The control of color temperature needs experience, and the operation is a bit cumbersome, but it is controllable. Personally, I like white balance drift, simple and clear. The control of saturation is relatively simple.

(2) lens

Different lenses have different expressive force on timbre, but have little influence on timbre. In order to control the tone on the lens, we usually add various filters.

Pre-shadow control: gradient filter, grey mirror, reduction mirror, etc.

Early soft and hard tone control: polarizer, soft mirror, etc.

Pre-tone control: color temperature mirror, sky mirror, filters of various colors, color filters, etc.

(3) Light

Light has several elements: luminosity, light level, light quality, light type, light ratio and light color. Brightness, light level, light quality, light type and light ratio mainly determine the hue of monochrome images. The color of light mainly determines the hue of the image. Light color also has a certain influence on black and white photography. Luminance, light level, light quality, light type and light ratio also play a very important role in the hue of color images.

(4) subject and environment

We shoot scenery, the subject and environment are basically uncontrollable, and we basically choose by composition. But when shooting an object, our controllability is enhanced, such as still life, posing portrait and so on.

In a word, there are many factors that affect the pre-adjustment, and the pre-adjustment ability is also a step-by-step process. There is a wide range of knowledge involved here, so I won't talk about it. There is a good saying that "photography is beyond photography", which probably means that the level of photography is not determined by the level of photography technology, but more depends on personal quality.

On photographic tone (control of later tone)

Post-processing timbre, with the help of computer software in the digital age, timbre control becomes very easy. Many softwares can meet the needs of tone control, such as Photoshop, Photopaint, Camera raw, lightroom, light and shadow magician, etc. Here I mainly talk about Photoshop(PS). Many names in the software come from early and late movies. For example: masks, filters, etc. With the foundation of later films, it should be easy to start. This software is relatively easy to use. Read more books on the market and online tutorials. Software is software after all. Even if you learn all the functions, you may not be able to handle the tone of a movie. The key lies in the photographer's control ability, not in solving problems by software.

Computer software makes timbre not limited by pre-conditions, and many timbre effects are difficult to achieve by pre-control. It can be said that there are only things you can't think of, and there is nothing you can't do. PS shines brilliantly in artistic photography, commercial photography and landscape photography.

Post shading control: In Photoshop, many methods can meet this basic requirement. For example, the lightness of lightening tool, deepening tool, curve, color scale and hue saturation. There are also many methods to deal with monochrome images, such as black and white, L-channel of LAB, color removal, gradient mapping and so on. The specific use method is not much to say, and the use of tools should be based on the expressive force of the theme and tone. Different films should be treated differently.

Late soft and hard tone control: Soft and hard tone control is much easier than early stage. For example, USM sharpening, high error keeping, Gaussian blur, thinning and deepening tools and other methods. There are also many useful external filters, such as DHR filter. If you master one or two methods skillfully, you can easily handle the tone. Different tools have different effects, so we should make use of the advantages of various methods to deal with tones.

Post-tone control: In PhotoShop, the color control ability can be said to be quite strong. Commonly used are optional colors, hue saturation, color balance and curves. Here we need some basic knowledge of color composition, such as the three attributes of color "lightness, hue and saturation" and the relationship between cold and warm colors. Colors, like tones, are emotional. When we control mood, we should add more feelings and emotional expressions, and the auxiliary function of mood will be greatly strengthened.

In the post-adjustment processing, it is very common to adjust for the sake of adjustment, and it is also a mistake I often make myself. Mood control is not to express mood, but how mood expresses what you want to express.