Copyright Basics

How do you protect your artwork from theft? How do you make sure that you get paid for it and someone else doesn’t? What do you do with your copyright once you have copyrighted art?

Digital photography, and other digital art forms, can be reproduced online and by most any computer millions of times, perfectly. This is both one of the great capacities of digital arts, and one of their drawbacks. Once digitized, your work can be published and seen with greater ease than any other art form. But once online, it could be difficult if not impossible to know if someone has copied your work and sold or repackaged it without your permission.

Advice#1: relax.

There’s so many millions of photographers in the world that until you’re famous or publishing a lot, it’s quite unlikely that someone will steal and then use your artwork. It’s probably more likely that you’ll be hit by lightning or win the lottery. That much said, a little information goes a long way. And the more professional you become, the more important it is to know these basics.

When is your work copyrighted?

                The moment you make the artwork it is copyrighted. It’s yours. Copyright is automatic.

Quite simply you don’t have to do anything for your work to be copyrighted. Nothing. Just do all the usual things such as backing up your files and you really don’t have to worry about it much. But if you ever need to prove your copyright in a court of law, then you need a public record of your copyright. This is extremely easy to do online. You can go to the government copyright website and for a fee you can submit pictures online for full registration. The website for all things copyright is http://www.copyright.gov There you’ll find full directions for copyright and the online center for copyright submissions at http://www.copyright.gov/eco/

But I hope you don’t copyright each photo one by one. You could do that, but it’d cost you $35 per registration – 20 of your best photos would cost $700. Ugh!

Here’s how to copyright a hundred photos for less than $100: batch together an entire body of artworks as a large project. So for example, you could take a set of 100 related photos, and compress them into one large ZIP file using a compressing utility like PKZip (http://www.pkware.com/software-pkzip/file-compression) PKZip is shareware – it has a free demo but then eventually you’d need to buy software (around $50) or find some other compressing utility. Then you upload the zip file of your entire set of photos to the US Government Copyright office, fill out a form online, and pay the online copyright fee ($35). In eight or nine months the government sends confirmation that your set of works is fully registered for copyright. Easy!! 

Of course if you really aren’t publishing your photos anywhere, then it’s unnecessary to register your copyright – everything’s copyrighted the moment you make it, automatically. You should really only bother to register and pay for copyright online if you’re going to be publishing the work widely where people might see it and steal it.

For a while it used to be that the artist had to sign the artwork and put the year and the copyright symbol on it, for example "Gregory Scheckler © 2010." Many artists still do this although it is no longer necessary, thank goodness, because such signatures and symbols are dreadfully ugly on top of carefully composed photos!

The issues surrounding theft of images. copyright, fair use and artworks does imply a few other things:

-          As an artist, as a professional, you should create your own artworks and not steal anyone else’s artworks. Not only is it best for your creativity to make your own work, it's best legally.

-          Give credit where credit is due, cite sources.

-          If you have a website you can decide how you post images, so they can be copied or so that they can’t (many pro photographers use a ‘Flash’ photo album that prevents copying of images).

As I said before theft of images is rare. But it does happen. It’s worst when it’s from artist to artist. For example, the painter Shephard Fairey is being sued by the Associate Press for stealing a photo of President Obama, which Fairey illegally used to create his famous ‘Hope’ poster. (click the link to get a series of articles about Fairey and the case at BoingBoing.net. I’m not a fan of Fairey’s work, but the issues are complex indeed). Artist Jeff Koons got skewered in the courts for having stole a photo of puppies which was a violation of the ‘fair use’ clause. Probably the main reason that both Fairey and Koons got sued is that they’re both rich. And they stole art from artists or organizations who had intended to profit from the artworks – in other words, varying levels of profit and serious money were involved in each case. After all ownership and money are at the core of copyright, because ... what do you do with your copyright?  

You sell it. 

To be more precise, you sell the versions of the artwork along with variations of the rights to copy the art. 
When you agree to publish your photos somewhere, you are allowing the publisher to buy the rights to use the photo. Doing so is often called 'licensing.' Artists often sell

-          Limited Non-Exclusive Reproduction Rights

-          Unlimited Non-Exclusive Reproduction Rights

-          Exclusive Reproduction Rights

So for example suppose you had a nice set of landscape photos that a publisher would like to use for a set of greeting cards. You would arrange and negotiate the kind of reproduction rights that meets your needs. In most cases, you would only sell limited, non-exclusive rights (sometimes called ‘one time publication rights’) for a simple fee – say $1,000 for the publisher to have the right to use five photos for the greeting cards for one run of the cards. Non-exclusive rights means that you can still sell the image to other venues, in galleries, etc. Exclusive rights means only the publisher can use the image – I’d encourage you to never sell exclusive rights. Well, unless you getting a ton of money for them. Similarly you would only sell unlimited rights for big money, because without limitations the publisher can make millions of copies of the artwork for any purpose. Every artist must of course decide what the pro’s and con’s of each situation are depending on the job and your own need for pay.

All of this brings up basic copyright and licensing Advice#2: if you have a contract and you don’t understand it, hire an arts lawyer to help you.

And advice #3: have a contract. 

You can find many examples of licensing and rights agreements online by googling ‘photograph license agreement’ Here's a random sampling: fairly straightforward by Andrew Stottsan; detailed by Carl Schneider; less formal by Marilyn Coey.  You might notice from these examples that when the photographer sells a photo, she is not necessarily selling the entire copyright. Also to illustrate what this looks like, here’s the actual text of a licensing contract from a small job I once did for a record company for an album cover. Note how despite the apparent global terms, this contract specifies ‘non-exclusive’ except for my agreement not to sell the image for any other sound recordings. This is a standard boilerplate contract:

=============== start contract ===============================

From: (Company address removed)

June 30, 2009

To: Gregory Scheckler

(address removed)

RE: (product removed) / Gregory Scheckler Artwork Agreement (1510.09-ART)

Dear Gregory,

The following, when signed by you and by us ("company"), will confirm our agreement

with you:

1. You hereby represent and warrant that you are the sole author and owner of ONE (1)

piece of art, a copy of which is attached to this agreement as Exhibit "A" and by this reference made

a part of this agreement (the "Material"). You hereby grant to COMPANY a worldwide, perpetual,

irrevocable license to exploit the Material in packaging, promotion, publicity, marketing materials,

and merchandising including merchandise for sale for the COMPANY artist professionally

known as “ARTIST” (“Artist”), including the non-exclusive right to reproduce, distribute,

display publicly, and make derivative works of, the Material, and including the non-exclusive

worldwide publication rights and the non-exclusive rights to use the Material in connection with the

Artist for any purpose and in any medium, now known or devised in the future, perpetually and

throughout the world. As between you and COMPANY, you shall be the owner of the copyright in the

Material, subject to COMPANY's non-exclusive rights to use the Material as described herein and the

restrictions on your use of the Material as described herein, and provided that notwithstanding the

foregoing COMPANY shall be the owner of the compilation copyright in the Artist's records and

related materials embodying the Material. You hereby irrevocably authorize, empower, and appoint

COMPANY your true and lawful attorney (a) to initiate and compromise any valid claim or action

against infringers of COMPANY's rights with respect to the Material; and (b) to execute in your name

any and all documents and/or instruments necessary or desirable to accomplish the foregoing.

COMPANYwill give you ten (10) days notice before signing any such document in your name.

COMPANY may dispense with that waiting period when necessary, in COMPANY's judgment, to

protect or enforce its rights, but COMPANY will notify you in each instance when it has done so. The

power of attorney granted under this paragraph 1 is coupled with an interest and is irrevocable.

2. As full consideration for all rights granted herein in and to the Material and your

representations and warranties contained herein, COMPANY will pay you (inclusive of any sales, use

or other applicable taxes)

(a)  (fee stated here)

3. You hereby represent and warrant that you have not and will not use and/or license

or otherwise dispose of rights in the Material to any other third party in connection with the

exploitation of, the marketing advertising and promotion of sound recordings.

4. You warrant and represent that (a) you have the right and power to enter into and

fully perform this agreement; (b) no use of the Material by COMPANY or its licensees for any

purpose authorized hereunder will violate any law or infringe any rights of others; (c) you have not

done or permitted and will not do or permit any act or thing which shall or may impair in any

manner the rights herein granted; (d) there is no litigation, dispute, claim or action in connection

with the Material; (e) COMPANY will not be required to make any payments in connection with the

Material or its use, except as provided in paragraph 2 above; and (f) you will execute such further

instruments as COMPANY may require to effectuate the purpose and intent of this agreement. You

will indemnify COMPANY and any licensee of COMPANY against all claims, damages, liabilities, and

expenses (including reasonable counsel fees and legal expenses) arising out of any breach of your

representations and warranties.

5. This agreement contains the entire understanding of the parties and will be governed

by the laws of the State of California applicable to contracts entered into in California and entirely

performed there. No change of this agreement will be binding upon COMPANY unless made by an

instrument signed by an authorized signatory of COMPANY. Company may assign its rights under

this agreement in whole or in part. You will perform under this agreement as an independent

contractor and not as Company's agent or employee.

Exhibit A (artwork attached)

======================= (end contract) ==============================

More difficult than any of these legal issues, of course, is finding people and publishers who will pay for your artwork. For that you’ll need to contact galleries, publishers, artists and editors for advice, basic business connections, etc. Probably the easiest way to get a lot of addresses and phone numbers in one place is to get a hold of the most recent version of Photographer’s Market. Then start sending out your best photos or other artworks, and keep at it. Once you have 6,000 rejections in a row you can give up. Until then, keep seeking paid work.

Lighting Diagrams and Recipes

This new blog post looks to contain hundreds of ideas about lighting for the staged photo:

20 Resources That Will Get You Lit

I'm not much of a portraitist, but if you'd like to learn more about studio lighting for portraits, Stefan Tell has some very clear blog posts about portrait lighting. 

Curves

Bonus blog post...

Basically, we haven't discussed it much yet but the Curves adjustment tool is a great way to adjust tone and color (and therefore exposure) ranges throughout a photo all in one convenient place. Very useful. See Photoshop menu Image --> Adjustments --> Curves or for similar processes in GIMP try menu Colors --> Curves.

There's an extremely clear and understandable tutorial about how to use Curves over at Tutorial9.net

Curves can be overdone with great ease... but they can also be a convenient way to tweak a lot of color and value settings all at once. And if you want very subtle control using layers options like 'lighten' or 'darken' or 'luminosity' or 'hue' with some transparencies too, try using Curves in a new Layer, or Adjustment Layer. (actually the same is true with any of the processing controls we've tried throughout this class).

Visual example of the differences... using curves to fix the tonal range in the shadows and midtones...

Snapshot versus Fine Art, Part 2

Part 2:  Intersections with Photojournalism

Similar to the snapshot is a strictly photojournalistic approach, in that snapshots and photojournalism tend to rely on unretouched photography. But photojournalism unlike the snapshot can be quite intentional.

The photojournalist's documentary photo is intended as evidence to tell or support the news. With photojournalism, realism is necessary and the photographer aims to tell a story that’s consistent with what’s really happening in the world. For that reason, retouching of the image is forbidden. In contrast, the fine art photo includes much of the artist creating the image in such a way as to draw out expressions, images, and content that the artist finds most important – not merely what’s there to be photographed, but rather, what’s there to be richly emphasized, even altered if needed. The fine art photo could be (but doesn’t need to be) heavily altered and retouched, whereas the photojournalistic photo must not be retouched, and the snapshot photo too is normally little retouched. But unlike the documentary photo's need for realism, the snapshot is not retouched for a different reason... it’s just too casual to bother with much redesigning and retouching.

Our expectations are that fine art photos don’t have to be but could be retouched, redesigned, and altered for aesthetic or symbolic effect, whereas the snapshot probably isn’t altered and the photojournalist or documentary photo had better not be. We expect some photos to be truthful representations, even evidence in a court of law, whereas we expect other photos to be expressive or even wholly fictional.

But at a certain level no photo is entirely truthful, since the photographer must always adapt camera settings, lens settings, and composing to the imagery that she intends to record, thus altering what can be recorded every step of the way.

On the intersections and problems among the differences between careful editorial photojournalism, strange retouching issues, truthfulness versus misleads in photography, there is no better writer than Errol Morris (who made the academy-award winning documentary, The Fog of War). I recommend reading these two sets of his online essays:

It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1, and Part 2) – detailing the problems of how to title and caption a ‘truthful’ photojournalism.

Photography As a Weapon (linked here at the NYTimes Blogs) – regarding the unusual retouching and captioning that happens in photos such as the missiles shown here, which is widely recognized as a fake, although it was published by numerous newspapers:

[photo credit: New York Times / Errol Morris]

All of this begs the question... can you really trust any photo? Responding to this question requires being very familiar with the intentions of the photographer, the apparent uses of the camera and its settings, and looking for tell-tale clues in the photo that something may have been manipulated. How do you recognize the fakes? In addition to Morris’s articles, here’s a great sidebar discussion at Scientific American, Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo.

If you’d like much more detailed information about photo fakes and image forensics, then you should check out the research and writings of Hany Farid, who leads the Image Science Group at Dartmouth.

Sometimes, of course, finding the fakery is delightfully easy. You'll see lots of humorous examples (and some fakes of fakes), at PhotoshopDisasters.  Enjoy!

Snapshot versus Fine Art, Part 1

We’ve looked at and worked with the differences between ‘found image’ photography and ‘staged scene’ photography – you are currently working on a series of staged scenes as a narrative.

Another major distinction among types of photography is the snapshot versus the fine art photo, or more simply snapshot versus photograph. One common critique question, heard in art schools everywhere: “Is this photo a snapshot or a photograph?”

What are the differences between a snapshot photo and a fine art photo? A snapshot, of course, is casual, quick, and sort of documentary. It is the speedy photo of kids during a party. The snapshot is informal and spontaneous.  A photograph (or fine art photo), on the other hand, is carefully composed and exposed for artistic reasons, printed with special care, and thoughtfully made at every level of the creative process.  A fine art photo is considered and planned.

Here’s a couple of photos that have the classic ‘snapshot’ look:

Here is a step-up from raw snapshot, a 'snapshot-sketch' of a landscape (Warren Falls, VT)

This photo shows promise... I used it to test exposures and croppings while at the scene considering how to represent and express the richness and depth of the varying water, evergreen, and rock textures. And here is my fine art photo of the same location:

The sketch was impulsive, just a rough test of the scene. I used it to help get to the fine art photo (hence the term ‘snapshot-sketch’). The second was purposeful. It was composed, cropped, toned, refined, and revised. The second one is headed straight for my b/w landscape portfolio.  

You could, of course, for artistic reasons create a series of photos that take on the casual, unretouched appeal of a snapshot. But if you’re doing so on purpose, then you are thinking through the images and designing them for artistic reasons. It’s only when you don’t think it through and do no planning that you really truly have a set of casual, quick snapshots.

And you might also find that there is such a thing as a great, beautiful snapshot – that lucky moment when everything falls together and you get a surprise, an excellent image. And there is also the horrible fine art photo, where the image, its meanings or symbolism, or technical flaws all add up to create yuck. Just because a photo is fine art doesn’t mean it’s good, and just because a snapshot wasn’t intentional doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Meanwhile we all like photography because taking photos is fun, often speedy (compared to an oil painting anyway!) and often memorable. If you’re like me then even while making ‘fine art’ photos you are taking thousands of snapshots… at parties, on vacation, etc. Additionally, with software tools like Photoshop and GIMP, it’s very easy to crop, compose, retouch, alter and adjust almost every aspect of any photo. Many snapshots can be turned into fine art photos. So we must be careful not to think of snapshots as polar opposites of fine art photos. It’s more like subtle degrees of difference from a fairly casual photo to a very planned one.

As a painter, I like to compare snapshots with rough sketches, whereas the fine art photo – wholly composed and considered – is more like the finished oil painting. One leads to the other, and sometimes, the finished paintings create a storm of ideas that become sketches and turn into another artwork later on. These feedback cycles among snapshots and fine art photos produce a lot of the creativity of photography today.

Clarifying the conundrums… a look at the camera settings and processes that yield the look of a snapshot versus the look of an art photo:

Camera Settings for…	Snapshot aka ‘Casual’	Fine Art aka ‘Planned’
note:	‘often accidental’ and ‘relies on other’s engineering’	‘often purposeful’ and ‘relies on artist’s choices’
Exposure	Auto	Measured and selected
Signal to Noise	Somewhat Noisy, medium to poor signal	High signal, sharp and smooth when needed
Lighting	Found and/or Direct Flash	Found, Directional Flash (bounced, reflected, etc.), Controlled or Added Light, or waited for the best natural light.
White Balance	Auto	Custom, or Selected Specific WB
Focus	Auto = averaged, a little soft	Pin Sharp if needed
Shutter Speed	Auto	Selected as needed for action, motion blur, time lapse
F-Stop	Auto or does not apply (snapshot fixed lens camera)	Selected for specific depth of field.
ISO	400, 800 or greater	Usually lower than 400

Here’s a slightly different way of thinking about this, full of value judgments but you get the idea…

Type of Photo	Results for Snapshot Settings	Results for Fine Art Setting
Portrait	-          One light source, harsh -          Red Eye -          Focus not on eyes -          Odd microexpressions (shutter speed too fast) -          Tones and skin colors feel too orange or too green-yellow (auto WB) -          Harsh edge or rim shadows (direct flash) -          Background cluttered -          Person looks worse in photo than in real life	-          Great light = mood, beauty, expression -          Eye highlights add lively feeling -          Focus crisp on eyes -          ‘Human’ expressions -          Colors feel natural -          Softened shadows or reflections (bounced light) -          Background composed -          Person probably looks better in photo than in real life.
Landscape	-          Harsh or Midday Lighting -          Odd crops, no composition -          Found view with extreme ease of access (anyone could find this location) -          Unretouched -          Bland tones or colors, photo doesn’t remind of the scene -          Narrow d.o.f. -          Clouds have blinkies, or shadows have crunges. -          Horizon Crooked -          Image is boring to look at; I’d rather go for a hike and see the world on my own.	-          Magic Hour lighting (dawn or dusk) -          Patient, composed scene, no visual distractions -          Scoped out the best location and waited for the light (more unusual or original view) -          Color retouched or saturated. -          High f-stop = long depth of field, a lot in focus. -          Widest color and tonal ranges (WB) -          Horizon is level (tripod). -          Photo is rich and interesting to look at, I’m happy spending time with it.

And finally there’s subject matter: the fine art photo can have any subject matter, but it’s my experience that the snapshot photo tends to be familiar scenes, and people that you know – the purpose of the snapshot is usually to celebrate and remind you of these scenes or people. For example, a photo of children during a birthday party, or a group of friends at the top of a mountain peak after a long hike. In both cases, the photo’s purpose is mainly ‘remember this? This was a special event that we shared.’ We assume that such snapshots are mostly accurate representations of the scene, event, or people. We don’t make the same assumption about the fine art photo, where we expect the artist to manipulate the imagery to create meaning.

Extra Credit Project: Create two photos of the same scene, but make one of the photos look like a casual snapshot or snapshot sketch, and make the other appear to be a fine art photo. One should be casual and unplanned, where the other should seem planned, purposeful, and thoughtful. Place the two images together in one digital file, and submit it to our shared Picasa album. NOTE: This project is optional. Extra credit will be provided to those who complete this project.

Example:

Mini-Portfolio: Staged Scene with Narrative

Here's the full description of your next big homework project... 


Mini-Portfolio: Staged Image Narrative

due date: Monday March 29^th

Description: in contrast to the 10x100 series of found images where you semi-randomly found an image and then adapted your camera settings to it, in this series you will create a set of staged images, where you arrange, set-up, organize and light all qualities of the photo according to your artistic vision.  In other words, you’ll adapt the world to your artistry. Furthermore, across the entire staged series, your photos should reveal a narrative. This series requires a set of at least ten photos, staged, that together tell a story. The most successful series will work well together as a group, even though each photo will also work well on its own. This project is not a technical exercise... it will be graded on originality, artistry, and good use of technique to meet the needs of your artistry.

What’s a narrative? A narrative is a sequence of images that reveal a story. It could be a complex plot with many variables, or, a simple progression of an abstract design idea.

How do you stage the photo? Some considerations and questions...  


Main subject matter. What or who is your single most important character in the scenes that you’re creating? Is it the same character in each of the ten images that you create, or does the main character change from image to image? 

Supporting cast members. A prop is a symbol. Everything in your image helps create the meanings and communications of the picture. How do the supporting cast members contribute to the scene? Do any detract from the scene (if so, remove them).   

Background imagery. How complex or how simple should you make the background? Should it be in focus, or outside the depth of field and out of focus? Should it be many, a few, or only one single pattern? Should it be a block of one color, a gradation of one color, or mixtures of many colors? 

The space.  Should the scene's space be tight and claustrophic, or wide and open?

The Lighting. Where is the lighting? What kind of light sources are present? Can you alter the light sources? Can you or should you add or remove any light sources? Should you use direct light, or a combination of direct and reflected light? Adding light: there’s many options, from lighting a candle to bouncing light off a ceiling using a desk lamp, to using a flashlight, to flooding a room with theatre spot lights or specialty photo lights. Additionally, each light could be a gentle or specific color – why not add a piece of blue mylar between the light and your subject? Removing light: you can block a window with a dark piece of fabric, shade, or shutters. You could have a friend hold a piece of cardboard in the way of a light, to set its direction to a new angle. Reflected light: you can soften a lot of shadows by bouncing some light into the scene using a piece of white poster board, a colored piece of fabric, or a mirror

Special Effects. Will you need multiple exposures, color manipulations, or significant retouching? Use your recipe list to keep track of the operations you perform on each image.

The Overall Style. Each of the ten images should look similar enough that they can work together as a series, but different enough that each image stands well on its own. 


Here are some examples of narrative series from professional photographers: 

Exactitudes: composite portraits by Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek


The Veil Project: staged portraits of women with veils, by Erin Mulvehill


Exploded. composites by Adam Voorhes

 
Works by Matthew Albanese. Talk about creating complex staged scenes!!!!! Click on the gallery on the right of the screen. 


Gregory Crewdson. click on the pics on the right for more images. 



Time to start brainstorming! You have this week and the week after Spring Break plus a few more days to create your project.

Know Your Lighting

Now there's a nice rainbow! (As seen last June, from Williamstown, looking towards Mt. Greylock.) As a landscape painter and when doing nature photography, my teachers often said you’ll get a great image if the sun is at your back – in other words, when light spreads out and illuminates the landscape in front of you. This tactic works for many scenes, but of course, not for every landscape – if you did a sunset image, probably the sun is in front of you. At sunset did you turn around and look behind you to see the orange-pink glow on the world? That glow is often referred to by artists as ‘Magic Hour’ since it only occurs for a short time during dusk, and dawn. And what about rainbows, when the light must be far in front of you? Really the point of this kind of advice is this: it always helps to be aware of when, where, and what kind of lighting you are using. Know your lighting.

Some things to know about your lighting...

Color Temperature: this you already know, via our white balance exercise.

Location: Where are the Light Sources? Light can come from any direction. In art we tend to group it simply as scenes that are front lit, side lit, silhouette, rim lit, flash (direct), flash (bounced).

What kind of light: Light can also be direct, meaning from an obvious light source. Sometimes a light source is bounced from one place to another, such as beamed into a mirror and then onto your subject matter, and sometimes light is bent through a material like water. These situations are called Direct Light (common), Reflected Light (uncommon), Refracted Light (rare, like rainbows)

Today’s exercise: create a still-life scene with one direct light source, and some simple subject matter. Then take a series of ten photos of the scene where you systematically move the lighting and add reflections, thus demonstrating and experiencing each main type of lighting. Put the photos together to create one composite image wherein you can easily compare the differences of one lighting scenario to the next.
        Hints: You’ll need to set this up so that you can easily adjust the lighting. You will need a light, such as a desklamp or clip lamp. Use only that light. Turn off all other lights. You'll also need a reflector such as a mirror or piece of white posterboard or paper. To create reflections, hold or place the reflector opposite the light source and angled towards the still life... experiment to see if you can soften the shadows. It helps to put the camera on a tripod, if you have one. Use the same scene throughout, but alter the lighting for each photo. You may need to adjust the exposure to avoid blinkies and crunges. Make sure of course that you’ve set your white balance for the best result for your scene.
      Create the following directions of light: silhouette (the light is behind the subject matter, pointing towards your camera), silhouette with an additional reflected light (I used a mirror for the examples above), side lit right, side lit right w/reflection added, side lit left, side lit left + reflected light, 3/4 lit (light is in front, somewhat above and somewhat to the side), 3/4 lit + reflection, bottom lit (lit comes from below, the 'spooky campfire' look), and bottom-lit + reflected light. It's not required but if you'd like to do light from above (Top Lit), you could add it in and it's top lit + reflection version too. Be sure you note what kind of light you use, and then label each direction of light source that you use.
      Your final result should be similar in format to this image (although you might choose to use color)...

               

 

Understanding Color: Part 3, Color Space and Color Profiles

So by now you know that you can adjust the color with some basic software controls such as Hue/Saturation, and Color Balance. Hopefully you also played around and found Photo Filter, Curves, and Channel Mixer. And you also saw that you could adjust the color depending on your camera’s White Balance settings related to your light source, matching the light source to get as close as possible to what you see, versus mixing the WB and the light source up on purpose for artistic effect.

I urge you to use any of these controls with artistry, with some subtlety related to the intent of your image-making. It's frighteningly easy to overdo with such powerful camera and software color controls, making an image that appears incredibly unnatural.

Meanwhile, we want color to be consistent across our entire photography process – in other words, it’s great when the colors in your photograph look excellent on the computer screen, and look like the same excellence when you print the photo or submit it to a website. Unfortunately often the photo looks different from camera, to screen, to printer. If this happens to you a lot, then you are probably experiencing a color management problem.

There’s no easy way to solve color management problems. And to solve them, you’ll need some more detailed technical information. And actually technical information regarding color for computers, software, and equipment like monitors and scanners and printers is a time-consuming task at best, and at worst, a total mess. There’s no simple international standard for color management, and there’s many different ways that software programs and hardware devices define and use color, and literally thousands of different products to negotiate. There’s a lot of kinds of math involved to get your software to reproduce and mimic various kinds of color – an immense amount of engineering between taking the digital photo and printing it. Thus a most important rule is this:

                READ YOUR OUTPUT. READ YOUR PRINT. READ YOUR MONITOR.

See what the photo looks like, i.e., ‘Read’ the photo. If you intend to put the image up on a screen, website, or social network, then test the image by putting it on the website (you can always delete it if it looks crummy). It can be a little costly, but it also can really pay off to make a test print with your printer. But don’t just leave it online or on your desk, look at it. First, is it too grainy or sharp enough? Is the exposure correct? Third, are the colors comparable to what you have on your screen on your computer, when you're looking at the picture in your image-processing software?

If it looks the same and looks great, then leave it alone, change no settings, and move on. But if it doesn’t appear the same in your image-processing software and then online, or onscreen versus in print, then you can be sure that some odd color management translations are happening between the Color Space, and the Color Profiles. What you need to do to resolve the problem color changes is called Color Management and Color Calibration.

To get to Color Management you need to know some basic jargon:  

Color SPACE (often called Working Space, or Reference Space) this is generally independent of your equipment.  Color Spaces can be big or small. The bigger they are, the more color definitions they can include, and thus the bigger the range of colors you get to work with. The smaller they are, then the smaller the range of colors you can use. So, if you have a photo set to a big color space with lots of colors, you may encounter problems when a printer or website has to get rid of data and translate it to their smaller color space. Color space today comes in three main types: sRGB, a smaller color space; Adobe RGB, basically a medium-sized color space;  and PhotoPro RGB, quite large. You won’t see the difference between sRGB and PhotoProRGB if you don’t have a computer monitor that can handle the wide range of colors of the PhotoProRGB definitions.

You can check the color space when you have the photo open, you can check the color Mode (in Photoshop it’s under menu Image – Mode). Simply select RGB. When you save a photo with Photoshop, you can also select the color space of the photo. Here’s what this would look like – look for the checkbox marked sRGB:

See the checkbox that says ICC Profile: sRGB? Just make sure it is checked.

You can also change the color space in Photoshop using the Edit --> Color Settings menu. A dialog menu will come up like this:

The color space here should be the same as when you save the file... make sure it says 'preserve embedded profile' for each of the three color management policies too.  [GIMP users... I'm not sure where this kind of control is in GIMP... have you found it? If yes please specify in your comment.]

Feel free to click on the drop-down menus and see what the choices are. For instance under RGB you'll find sRGB, ProPhoto, etc. My advice to you is this: always use sRGB as your main color space. Anything other than sRGB is way out of range for most compact digital cameras today. Also, sRGB’s by far the most common color space used online and in print today. If you want or need a much bigger color space, then go with ProPhoto RGB… if and only if you have access to a ten-thousand dollar printer, specialty inks, an excellent digital SLR camera, and a fancy computer monitor, and archival printer paper. You might get to that level of investment if you work in print media, or work as a professional art photographer. Otherwise, for color management you really only need to make sure your photos and your software are set to sRGB color space.

Now, to make matters more complex...

Color PROFILE (ICC profiles for each piece of equipment that you’re using) Each piece of equipment that you use, such as your camera, your monitor, and your printer, has its own color profile. The Color Profile tells your computer how each piece of equipment can work in or out of the range of colors defined in your Color Space. If you have a monitor, a printer, a camera, and a scanner, you may be dealing with at least four different color profiles that all relate differently to the color space.

Color Management tells your computer how to negotiate all of the color profiles of your equipment within the color space that you’re using. Color CALIBRATION is when you match the settings of your camera or scanner to your monitor and printer, website, or other output. When they all match as closely as possible, then your system is calibrated, and usually your photo looks the same on screen as it does when printed.  

This is a lot more difficult than it seems like it should be… Windows is a bit different than Mac OSX, for how to set the color space of your monitor. Fortunately you can use an automatic device to calibrate and test your monitor. For example, here’s my "XRite EyeOne" color calibrator on my laptop’s computer screen:

It’s basically automatic, and makes sure that your monitor is all in order. It plugs in with a USB cable, and syncs up with it's own software, and then sets the ICC Color Profile. A calibrator like this is really the only way to make sure that what you see on screen is true to what other people using their own calibrated screens would see. Besides EyeOne, other affordable brands are Pantone Huey, and ColorVision Spyder. Both are mouse-sized doodads with a tiny visual sensor in them that responds to the light emitted by your monitor. If you're serious about making sure that graphic designers, publishers, and printers get the colors in your images just right, then it is a wise idea to spend $100 on a decent color calibrator.

Another Pro Tip: If you’re sending your images away for someone else to print – then ask them what color settings you should use to get the most consistent results. A good printer will tell you what settings are best for their printing equipment. Same with a good website that needs photos. Ask them what color space or color profiles they need, and then DO WHAT THEY SAY. Color is a complicated set of balances, and when any printer has a specific series of settings that make pictures look their best, then just follow their directions. Even if you have your images set to sRGB, if they say they need ProPhoto or they send you their own ICC profile, then use their method, not your own personal favorite.