The feeling of colors

Learning goal

You will be able to predict the feeling a photo's colors may stir in the viewer, and steer this feeling consciously. You will explain the possible sources of why warm colors feel close and lively to most viewers, and cool colors distant and calm; you will see that besides hue, saturation and brightness change the feeling too; you will know that the feeling of color isn't the same for everyone and is read together with context; and while warming or cooling a frame in editing, you will be able to make sure that people, on every skin, keep their own color apart from this change.

The question

At a train station, you are photographing an elderly couple sitting side by side on a bench. At home you edit the photo twice. When you warm the frame slightly, the bench, the wall and the coats take on a honey color, and the frame feels to you like a warm, close wait. When you cool it, it is the same couple, the same bench, but the frame seems to tell of a parting, a distance.

Do colors carry feelings? If they do, where does this feeling come from, and does everyone who looks at the photo feel the same thing? In this lesson we will talk about reading the feeling colors add to a photo through three settings, hue, saturation and brightness; how much of this feeling comes from the color and how much from the viewer; and how to protect people's skin while playing with color.

Context

The map we built with the color wheel showed how colors affect each other inside the frame; like the tangerines in the blue crate, or a face blending into the background. This lesson looks at the relationship between color and viewer: what does a color stir in the person looking at the photo?

Lesson 7.4 said that when neutralizing in editing, you shouldn't erase the scene's atmosphere completely; making a candlelit evening completely neutral lost that evening's warmth. That atmosphere has a name and a logic. By the end of this lesson, you will be better able to predict what you are doing when you warm or cool a frame, and what it may stir in the viewer.

Simple explanation

Why do warm colors feel close and cool colors distant?

The half of the wheel stretching from red to yellow is called warm colors, and the half stretching from green to blue and purple is called cool colors. Many viewers perceive warm colors as closer and livelier, and cool colors as more distant and calmer. There is no definite proof of this, but there are plausible explanations. Fire, the sun and the evening lamp are warm in color and often close to us. Distant mountains, on the other hand, turn blue: because the air in between scatters the blue part of the light more, distant things both fade and shift toward blue. This effect, which painters and photographers call aerial perspective, is a natural basis for telling depth with blue, faded colors and closeness with warm, saturated colors.

That is why, in a landscape, a warm foreground and a distance leaning toward blue give the frame depth. In a portrait, a warm face standing in front of a cool background brings the face closer to the viewer. Doing the opposite, that is putting a cool subject in front of a warm background, is possible too; this time the subject draws back and the background comes forward. Both are a choice.

What do saturation and brightness change?

The feeling of color doesn't come from hue alone. Saturation, that is how vivid a color is or how close to gray, affects the feeling at least as much as hue. Saturated colors make a frame loud and energetic: a holiday market, a children's festival. Faded colors close to gray quiet the frame: a misty morning, an old photo album, a seaside at the end of winter. The same blue can read as a cheerful summer sky when saturated, and as a hazy longing when faded.

Brightness carries its own feeling too. A frame built in light tones feels light and airy, a frame built in dark tones heavy and dense. Hue, saturation and brightness work together: a dark, saturated red and a light, faded pink are from the same color family, but can tell very different things. When you want to change a frame, thinking about these three settings separately makes it easier to find which one gives the feeling you want.

Is the feeling of color the same for everyone?

No. Some colors carry shared associations that come from experience, and others come from culture, personal history and context. White is the color of weddings in some places, of mourning in others. Red can call up love, danger and a team's jersey all at once. Green reads very differently in a hospital corridor and in a spring meadow. Most of the time it isn't the color alone that builds a color's meaning, but the color together with the other things in the photo.

That is why it is more reliable to think of the feeling of color as a tendency rather than memorizing it like a dictionary: warm colors feel close to most viewers, but not to every viewer and not in every context. When you decide on a photo's color, the question to ask isn't what this color means in general, but what this color stirs in this photo, with these people, in this place. It isn't a rule that decides whether the decision is right or wrong, but what you want to tell.

How do you protect skin while playing with color?

Warming or cooling a frame shifts every color in the frame in the same direction, people's skin included. When you cool the frame, light skin can shift to a purplish pallor and dark skin to gray and ash; when you warm the frame too much, light skin can turn orange and dark skin copper. While the atmosphere changes, faces lose their own colors too, and the people in the photo can look as if they are inside a mistake, not inside the feeling you wanted to tell.

Many editing programs offer settings that let you change only a certain range of colors. A piece of knowledge from Lesson 11.3 is useful here: human skins, from the lightest to the darkest, gather in a warm slice close together on the color wheel. While cooling the background and the shadows, you can leave the orange range as it is, or cool the whole frame and then warm the orange range back a little. That way, while your atmosphere stays cool, every skin, light or dark, keeps its own warmth. This work, called color grading, is using color not only to correct but to tell.

Visual evidence

You go back to the couple at the train station. The woman is light-skinned, with white hair; the man is dark-skinned, with a gray mustache; both are in dark coats, with a suitcase in their hands. When you cool the whole frame, the station is blue and distant, but the woman's face has shifted to a purplish pallor and the man's face to an ashen dullness; both look ill.

Without taking back the coolness, you warm only the orange range a little. The station's walls, the rails and the clock in the background are still cool and distant; but the woman's cheeks come back with a pinkish warmth, and the man's forehead and hands with a deep brown. The frame still tells of a parting or a wait, but the two people now stand alive inside that feeling. The same frame, the same cold atmosphere; the difference was protecting the skins separately.

Common mistakes

Summary

Warm colors feel close and lively to most viewers, cool colors distant and calm; a plausible source of this is the warmth of fire and the sun, and distant mountains turning blue through aerial perspective. Saturation and brightness change the feeling too, and the meaning of color reads differently with culture, person and context; that is why color is a tendency, not a rule. While warming or cooling a frame, protecting the orange range separately lets every skin keep its own color.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will edit the same frame with different color feelings and protect the skins.

1. Edit a frame with people in it once by warming it and once by cooling it, put the two frames side by side, and write in one sentence the feeling each one stirs in you.
2. First raise the saturation of the same frame, then lower it until it nears gray; look at how the feeling changes.
3. In the frame you cooled, warm back only the orange range and compare how the skins change.
4. Show the two frames to a friend and ask them to say what they feel in one word; compare it with what you wrote.

Check yourself

• Did the frames you warmed and cooled stir different feelings in you?
• Did the word your friend felt match yours, or differ?
• In the frame you cooled, when you warmed back the orange range, did the light and dark skins return to their own colors?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. Why do distant mountains lean toward blue?

• A) Because the mountains' stones are blue
• B) Because the air in between scatters the blue part of the light more
• C) Because the camera's setting shows the mountains that way
• D) Because there is no sunlight in the distance

2. With what change can two colors of the same hue stir very different feelings?

• A) When saturation and brightness change
• B) Only when the file format changes
• C) With no change at all
• D) Only when ISO changes

3. What decides what feeling the color white carries in a photo?

• A) White being the color of mourning in every culture
• B) White being the color of weddings in every culture
• C) The photo's context, and the viewer's culture and personal history
• D) White's Kelvin value

4. If a dark-skinned person's face looks ashen in a frame you cooled, what do you do without spoiling the atmosphere?

• A) Warm the whole frame again
• B) Bring saturation down to zero
• C) Lower the exposure
• D) Warm back only the orange color range a little

Answers

1. B — Aerial perspective: the air between us and distant objects scatters blue light more, showing distant things faded and blue.
2. A — Even if the hue stays the same, a vivid or faded, light or dark color stirs a different feeling.
3. C — The meaning of color isn't universal; the same color reads differently in different places and contexts.
4. D — Warming separately the warm slice where skins gather brings back the skin's warmth while keeping the atmosphere.

Summary card

• Warm colors feel close to most viewers, cool colors distant; this is a tendency, not a rule.
• Aerial perspective: distant things are faded and blue.
• Feeling comes from three settings: hue, saturation, brightness.
• The meaning of color changes with culture, person and context.
• While warming and cooling a frame, protect the orange range; let every skin carry its own color.

Bridge to the next lesson

In this lesson we played with three settings that change a frame's feeling: hue, saturation and brightness. We usually call a difference in brightness contrast, and when we say contrast, black and white come to mind first. But don't a red and a green of the same brightness also separate from each other? The next lesson talks about how contrast is built not only between light and dark but also between colors, and how these two contrasts work together in a photo.