What do you mean by high-key, medium-key, low-key and bright gray color composition?

Tone is a modeling method and technical concept of black-and-white photography, but it is not limited to black-and-white photography, and color photos can also be described by tone. Now let's take a look. What is tone?

Tone is a modeling method and technical concept of black-and-white photography, which refers to any uniform density area on photos, negatives or transparent films that can distinguish bright or dark parts. In extreme cases, a photo may have only two tones, namely black and white, with no gray tone in the middle. However, in general, images have a lot of midtones between black and white. Black and white complement each other in tone. From the perspective of black-and-white photography, the main colors of tones can be divided into three categories: high-key, low-key and middle-key (gray tone). Different tones have different emotional colors, high-profile lightness and elegance, low-key solemnity and depth, and harmonious and stable middle tones. Only by combining hue with concrete images and objects can the works be endowed with vivid appeal.

These terms are not limited to black and white photography. Color photos can also be described as high-profile or low-key. It's just that we often use hue and color to express different color intensity, and gray, which constitutes the hue range, is also an integral part of color sense. Tone mainly depends on the intensity and angle of light shining on the subject.

First, high profile

High-profile gives people a bright, pure, relaxed and lively feeling. It is more suitable to express the image of women and children. Quiet in landscape photography, elegant and clean in commodity photography, soft, uniform, bright and smooth light is generally used in high-profile photography. Sometimes it feels ethereal, solemn, dull and sad, and sometimes it feels like light music and lyric poetry. According to the different content, the emotional color conveyed to people will be different.

Second, keep a low profile.

Low-key works sometimes make people feel firm, steady, calm and full of motivation, and sometimes make people feel dark, heavy and gloomy. The emotional color of low-key performance is stronger and deeper than that of high-key performance. With the change of the theme content of the works, they present their own different faces. Low-key works usually use side light and backlight, which make objects and portraits produce a lot of shadows and a small number of light-receiving surfaces, and have obvious sense of volume, weight and contrast. In the performance of characters, it is usually used in the elderly. Older people with high prestige can also show young people with deep personalities. There are sculptures, monuments, temples and so on in ancient buildings.

Third, the gray tone (middle tone)

Gray tone has its unique power. The personality characteristics of timbre are not obvious. But the picture is rich and delicate, and often presents different emotional colors with different images, dynamics, colors and light. It pays attention to the use of light and is generally equipped with multiple light sources. It is ideal to express the natural landscape with gray tone. Gray tone is good at blurring the outline of objects, producing a soft, quiet and elegant aesthetic feeling, and also good at expressing rain, fog, clouds and smoke.

Tone, there is also a high contrast tone: mainly to retain the black and white tone, cut and merge the middle levels to form a strong contrast between light and dark, giving people a sense of visual stimulation. Most of Gao Fancha's tunes emphasize the ideological connotation and emotional momentum of his works, and it is better to beat the cloth with simple backlight and side backlight.

There is also a soft tone, which is usually said to be a work taken with a soft lens, which can make the picture subtle, elegant and mysterious, and show more girls, children, flowers, the moon and so on.