Exercise: Colours into tones 1.

Take or choose an image which contains at least two strong contrasting colours. I have chosen red and green. I found a photo I had previously taken for one of the assignments on TAOP course. I was doing a slightly fashion inspired assignment at the time and had convinced my sister to help me.

(I have had to screen shot the images as for some reason I can't save my work from Lightroom)
 

In one image we are to lighten the grayscale tone of one of the colours and darken the tone of the other colour. In the second version do the opposite.

 

To start with I made and saved a black and white version to keep for reference. I then dragged the colour slider to lighten or darken the grey tone of the particular colour.

This image is quite bland, there is nothing interesting about I at all.

 For this shot I drastically increased the red and decreased the green sliders. Raising the red causes the red of the sheet to become a very pale grey, where as the green as darkened slightly.

For this example I have done the opposite and darkened the red and lightened the green. I think that I actually prefer this black and white version to any of the others as it seems more natural for the red to be portrayed in darker tones than the green. You are also able to make out more of the details in the grass.

In the past when I have converted to black and white I have never thought/not been aware of the ability to alter the tones of the image. I think that this can make an photo much more interesting and come alive more than a straight conversion.