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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Getting the Best Colors in Your Portraits

Chris Gampat
No Comments
01/06/2016
3 Mins read

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Rokinon 50mm f1.2 portraits of Asta (4 of 4)ISO 2001-1000 sec at f - 1.0

Portraiture in photography is an art involving not only compelling composition and posing, but an effective use of color. Many photographers shoot in black and white because it makes the photographer rely more on shapes, lines, contrast, etc. But when it comes to color, things get more complicated. For example, have you ever had skin tones that just weren’t really working for you or doing your subject justice?

Chances are that you probably didn’t do these color tweaks that will absolutely work for every portrait you take.

Three Primary Colors

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Portraits from Early Winter 2015 extras (13 of 21)ISO 4001-180 sec at f - 5.0

Making good portraits start with making the colors simple. Too many colors can be very, very difficult to manage. This has to do with wardrobe, lighting, skin tone, and backgrounds. To help with the effectiveness of the portrait, use three major colors in your portrait. More than that can make a viewer’s eyes go all over the place and bring attention to one place vs another.

The above example has this according to Adobe Lightroom:

  • Orange (Natalie’s skin tone)
  • Gray
  • Brown

More than that would have brought attention to other places. Don’t believe me? Imagine if Natalie had very deep blue eye shadow.

Your Intended Lighting

Chris Gampat Raiyan Saed's portraits (7 of 11)ISO 2001-160 sec at f - 3.2

To help make your colors work, you’ll need not necessarily good lighting–but instead for the portrait to have the light that you really wanted and intended it to have. That means adding in a flash, letting in enough ambient light, controlling shadows, using reflectors, etc. If you don’t have that lighting, the colors that you specifically want may be muddled with blacks or whites–or even a completely different color.

Camera Profile

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Profoto B2 first impressions review portraits of Megan (1 of 5)ISO 4001-100 sec at f - 2.0

Chances are that you want your RAW file to look more like the JPEG preview on the back of your camera. If you want to do that, use the Adobe Camera Profiles as a start. For example, Fujifilm cameras will give you Astia, Velvia, Provia, etc while Sony will give you Vivid, and more. This is a starting point that adjusts the colors, lighting and more to get the scene to be what you want.

White Balancing

Flat light, lower and less shadows. Model: Erica Lourde
Flat light, lower and less shadows.
Model: Erica Lourde

When you’ve selected your camera profile, it’s going to change the white balance. For portraiture, it’s best to adjust the white balance to the point where it renders the skin tones to be the most realistic overall. This should be the primary focus of your portrait, and the rest can be adjusted later as you’ll see.

Exposure Overview

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Eli Samuel Portrait sample (1 of 1)ISO 4001-250 sec at f - 1.0

After the white balance is fixed, ensure that you’ve got the right exposure that you want to portray in the image. You’ll probably go back and forth here with the exposure and the white balance, but don’t sit there and stress over it too hard. Make it as close to your intended creative vision as you can.

Whites/Blacks and Clarity

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Zeiss Milvus 50mm f2 Macro image samples justin portraits (1 of 2)ISO 4001-40 sec at f - 8.0

After the exposure has been fixed, work with a couple of specific parameters. Adjust the white levels, black levels, and the clarity. The clarity in Adobe Lightroom has to do with the midtones while the black and white levels tends to affect things like skin tones, hair, perceived sharpness, etc. You’re also most likely going to work with the shadows and highlights.

Luminance and Saturation

Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Phottix Indra500TTL Images portraits with Amanda (9 of 11)ISO 1001-2500 sec at f - 1.4

Lastly, work with the luminance and saturation of specific color channels. Remember the fact that I said use three primary colors? That’s where this will make your life so much easier as long as they contrast enough with the skin. In the image above I needed to work with red, orange and purple. A bit of working with the blues was done, but that’s how it was kept as simple as possible.

color lightroom portrait skin tones white balance
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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