How do you see it?

It's Idle time here. I gave myself a "vacation" from blogging last week for the Eid holiday. Not much has been going on except for some shots done in the family gathering - and they were not as vibrant as the years before. I, in fact, spent many days in the holiday sleeping for long hours (8 to 10 hours a day!). I guess I'm compensating for all the sleeping problems I've faced during Ramadhan. Meanwhile, I decided to do a little study on some aspect of tone-splitting technique. This study is not scientific in any way, but it is mainly observational to take some notes. I wonder though if there is a way to "scientify" this process after all.

Vergleichung

Since I've been working in Tone-splitting techniques for some time, I wanted to test some matters related to it. Yet, I'm not sure how to make a scientific and bold approach to such matter, since they are artistic in the first place. Thus, the sole reasoning in this experiment is done by heart and feelings initiated by eyes vision. The task here is to investigate the relation between luminance colors and their usage in tone-splitting process; how would they appear and feel when used as one of the tones in the process. But before going through rummaging, I will talk a bit about the process.

Concept
In the beginning, the general idea here is to use 2 colors: a specific chosen color from part of the image, and its complimentary color. Now, these two colors can be bright and dull sometimes, according to how we see it, but the main question was, how to specify this? What makes a color lustrous more than the other? If we have two complimentary colors, they are just opposites on color circle, and the difference between the two is barely in the Hue value, while Saturation and Brightness (or Lightness) have the same value. After searching around and with the help of the colors websites I have at hand, I've found out that the most adequate tool to compare these two is by checking their CIE-LAB values (LAB for short) - and more specifically, the "L" value (which stands for Luminance).

Portion from ColorHexa website showing the LAB values (in Red). The Luminance value which I've used for comparison between colors marked in blue.

After doing some experiments and comparing various colors, seems my guessing was right: The "L" value is indeed responsible for how "bright" the color is as we see it. So, what now?

Work
The work now was to choose a specific color. In the beginning, I was kind of in dilemma for what color should I choose in each image, as I didn't want to make the whole set is based on two complimentary colors alone - but it should be something of general concept. In the beginning, I tried to use the Average Blur command which makes an average of all the pixels in the image into one color. Sounded a good idea, but unfortunately, the colors resulting from this process were mostly dull and with low L-value, and their complimentary colors have the same characteristics. Thus, I had to do it in the usual manner as I usually do the tone splitting process for some of my images; by picking a lighted area in the image itself and analyze its color, and then pick the complimentary for that color. The two are used then to do the usual job of tone-splitting for the image.
I won't go on with the manual procedure of tone-splitting with the images, but to make things standard as much as possible, the random-picked images were turned into Black and White and using Maximum White preset (which can be found in the menu of the command in Photoshop). This preset sets all values for all tones to 100. Usually in my regular work in tone splitting I would play around with these values to pronounce specific details more than the others, but since I'm going to test several random images here, it is better to make something as a basic procedure.
Now according to these procedures and after picking a color and its complimentary color from the available colors in the image itself, we are in front of two cases, which I called "AB" and "BA" for easiness and affluence, where:

•  AB: The color of the higher luminance is assigned to the highlights, and the colors of the low luminance is assigned to the shadows.
•  BA: The opposite of the above; the low luminance color is assigned to the highlights of the image, while the color of high luminance is assigned to the shadows.

Thus, for each image picked here, we have two cases; one for AB and one for BA.

The Images
The images for the test are picked randomly, from various folders and years. Nothing specific was set to be looking for; simply random. The images are below and they are minimized. You can click any for a bit larger view. The total is 12 images.

Observation
After checking for myself with these twelve images (which is not enough in fact), I've made a simple statistical count:
AB preferred:  58.3%
BA preferred: 16.6%
Undecided: 25%

I can't surely say that having a luminance color to be taking the place of highlights is a sure thing, but I would say that with the abundance of highlights in some image, and placing a luminous color when splitting the tones in place of the highlights, that would make pretty much a bright image to the extent that, sometimes, it eclipses the complimentary color given for the shadows - thus, probably in such instances of abundant highlight, the AB type is not advisable. On the other hand, the colors chosen would play a great role, but in this instance it is all the role of taste. Those 25% of the undecided, might be so for compositional factors I presume, or ought to a balance in the overall highlights and shadows in the image, making the eye sight torn in between elements of the image without really residing on a specific element. This is all I could think of in the time being, but sure it doesn't end here. I'm wondering what would the next step be? More experimenting? Notice that all of this experiment, from A to Z, is based on color and complimentary color relation - there are other schemes to be investigated as well. Anyway, for the time being maybe I can put a guide line for myself in the matter of tone-splitting which might go like:

In tone-splitting process, the color of the highest luminance, or "L" value in LAB system, is to be assigned to the highlights, and its complimentary would be assigned to the shadows, providing that highlights do not overwhelm shadows in the image. And that is a starting point for creating and contrasty and easy-to-notice image.

And more testing should be coming on the way.

Finale

I was supposed to have some rest in this month, regarding my workplace which made it easy with the fingerprint attendance process. However, on Wednesday, I've received some letter asking that I should be doing the fingerprint attendance again after being told that I do have a exclusion permit till the end of the month. Such news really rose my blood pressure levels and added 10 more points to the scale of how much I do hate administrators and this workplace specifically. This, specifically, is an addition for really disrespecting this place even more. I just wish it is September already and I'm ready to go away from this trash just to smell some fresh air in Ireland.

On the other hand, I've checked out for another appointment for my eyes examination instead of the one which was during Ramadhan and I didn't attend. Even though it could have been in the next week but I told the nurse to put it some time in November. The appointment is supposed to take place on November 16^th. A special date if you ask me!

Source: Amazon

Book-wise, I've finally finished the optics book, which was small and old, but HUGE in its content of information. Of course most of the techniques mentioned in this book are, probably, obsolete by now, but the information mentioned here are nevertheless pretty much valuable. The book is direct and highly technical without much theory. I like such books. That doesn't mean I don't encourage reading theoretical books as well, but too much theory without a real scope on how to use such a theory in a proper and physical manner to be beneficial can almost be in vain.

Source: Amazon

Now, I've moved to the next book on the queue line, Archaeology Essentials. According to the introduction, it seems to be a "student" edition, or the type taught in colleges. Sounds good. I've gone through few pages so far and I like it. It is indeed concerned about Archaeology rather than sociological issues like the last book I've read. That book was somewhat a disappointment. I don't think I can finish this book in just a month, thus I think it will be my companion when I head to Ireland hopefully.

For now, I've stopped my extreme macro experiments. I still do have problems in lighting opaque subjects from the front, and I couldn't come up with a proper solution specially with my slow progress and my lessened attention to this matter. For this reason I've decided to stop it for now and think of some real photography to do in the few coming days, when possible.

My life looks like been punched with one big vacuum in the middle. Missing out some elements which are hard to be found any where, any time soon. All what I'm hoping for for the time being is to have one nice vacation. If someone doesn't feel bright about work, and doesn't feel at home in home, where would one go? I wonder...

Hexachromatic…

Turbulent time here. I'm trying so hard to push myself to work on various projects, and probably the only one project I'm advancing through is my other Arabic blog for photography beginners. Ramadhan will start by the next week and I have to say that it seems I'm not ready yet. The heat plus the creativity block on my side would make this Ramadhan not an easy time to pass. I even had some urge to write poetry, but words are betraying me often and pouring them to a piece of paper or to the Notepad is not an easy task anymore. Camera-wise, it's the same. Not much of ideas. The best I could do is visit my old arsenal of images and convert them to Black and White with some experimentation of Tone Splitting.

الله

I've acquired lately some amount of glycerine (a.k.a glycerol) which is sometimes used instead of water as droplets when taking shots of still life with "dew" on leaves and such. Glycerine is pretty beneficial in such instances because it has a good Surface Tension that holds each drop in a good spherical shape, beside its viscosity which allows it to be stable on the surface of a smooth leaf; unlike water drops that tend to slide easily down. My experiment, however, is something totally different to such shots.
Glycerine is also special in its optical properties; apparently a drop of it has more magnification power than water drops would have, and this property was inspiring somewhat. I wanted to use a drop of glycerine as a magnifying factor, but the problem is, inspiration was missing. The last thing I could think of is using a drop of it to magnify the holy word.

Allah
Canon EF 100mm Macro+2x Bower teleconverter,
f/5.6, 320^-1sec, ISO200.

First, I had to prepare the setup, which was simple in fact but since it was on the ground, there were some problems with the level of the camera and also how to set up the Speedlite 580EXII. On the Holy Book, I've placed a clean acrylic sheet and then put on a drop of glycerine on that. The rest was experimenting and changing the position of the Speedlite. It was hard and in fact, I never did take a good image that I really liked (not even the one above). However, I tried, and ironically, the property of the liquid that I liked the most, proved to be fatal the most; as it caused severe internal reflections and would cast a pretty dark shadow. I had to carry the camera by hand and shoot since I didn't have a low level enough, and I was sort of surprised to be able to focus at such close distance. The handshake wasn't a problem since I was shooting with a relatively high shutter speed  Many shots were made and I have to say I'm still not quite satisfied, but for the time being, this is the best I could do.

Trial

As you can see in Trial, which is one of the images made in that experiment, in the beginning this was the initial position and framing but it did feel wrong. Probably I just tend to place the subject on the left side because of my left-handedness in general. Anyway, as you may know, the Arabic script goes from right to left, and such positioning for the droplet was cumbersome somewhat. Thus, I had to change the framing and place the drop on the right side to go along the direction of the text (I think this is what they call the concept of "nose room") as it is the case in Allah. Ironically, I do like the appearance and the glossy look of the drop in Trial but unfortunately, the position wasn't right. Changing the perspective later changed everything and no perfect positioning for the speedlite (with modifiers) I could think of.
I'll stop at this, and probably think of something else to do with such droplets, and I'm already doing some "brainstorming" to try and think of some ideas to use such droplets. Most of the time, I do get these crazy ideas, yet, no way for doing them...

Hexachromatic

As I've stated before, I'm still working on turning some images and panoramas into B&W and with tone splitting techniques. By coincidence, I've encountered a very useful website: ColorCodeHex.

ColorCodeHex Snapshot.

In this website, you get to learn a lot about colors. In fact, X-Rite which provides the calibration tools for monitors and such, provides a software along with the set to help on calibrating or viewing and studying colors (specifically under different lighting when required). However, this website is different in its wealth of information provided and easiness of use, despite the fact that you cannot check the cast on a color under specific light temperature (color temperature). With this website, I've decided to do some experiments with splitting tones beyond the regular "complimentary colors" combinations.

Golden Hide
B&W + Tone Splitting

One of the experiments done here is with this panorama from Staten Island (back from 2012), Golden Hide; for The Grotto. What really pronounces this image more is the sharpness (I think it sort of makes it like cut of wood). However, to split tones for this image, I've used some shade of green (picked from the trees in the original image) to be for the highlights. For shadows, I've decided to use ColorCodeHex to know what options I have, and thus I picked one of the analogous colors provided after entering the main color's hex code. The term "analogous" means a color shade that is adjacent to the major color under inspection on the color wheel. My remarks? Well, it helps on making a major tint for the whole image as it is indeed a simple one tint but with the shadows tones under control, we can have more options in lighting and darkening the shadows - this can't be done in general tinting processes. The tint just paints the whole image. I can say that using an analogous color is a delicacy. However, the analogous color is not necessary of the same shade of the major color; it can be a color of the same color temperature but not really of the same shade. That needs more experimenting.

The Temple
B&W + Tone Splitting

Then I got to try the other concepts provided by ColorCodeHex, like the concept of Monochromatic Colors. Monochromatic colors are supposedly colors that share the same hue of the original color but are different in other values (saturation and luminance). In this panorama, also from Staten Island, The Temple, I've used one shade of yellow as the major color for highlights (picked from the lanterns hanging in the original image) and using the website I've got to know its Monochromatic colors set. From the set, I've picked the darkest to be the tone for the shadows. This way I could help on adding contrast even though I did use Curves later on to put on a little contrast too. Maybe the difference between the usage of the two classes of colors is not that obvious, but in practice it proves to be so, because Monochromatic colors class provides a wide range of colors but under the same shade (or hue), yet the class of Analogous colors provides adjacent colors similar in temperature mainly but not necessarily the shade, and hence it opens a gate for some creativity work and experimenting. My work with B&W and tone splitting is far from being over!

Geltanic UDHR

I had a chance to fix some aspect about the UDHR in Geltani and also record it. I just hope the plugins works correctly for listening here!



The sound might not be a high quality though. I really had some hard time saying some of these syllables, specially nasals. However, I think it's late now to adjust these values and I better get on moving and just train myself to say these hard combinations!
On the other hand things are going on slowly in the field of Geltani. One day I have to set up a proper document to be sent to Omniglot. Things will be handwritten though. I have to tighten the grip as well on some grammatical features and some words that still make discrepancies because of the basic wording in Arabic. I better begin writing down some rules about those!

Finale

Here I am, with my Irish visa granted and just waiting for September to arrive. I'm worried, I can't deny that. I'm even more worried because of all the events in this area.  I do ask myself sometimes, do not we deserve some peace of mind for just a month? One month of peace is all I'm asking for...
Ramadhan is coming next week and I have to say that I don't feel prepared yet despite all that fasting I did before. My time becomes always compressed in Ramadhan. I do wish if I'm just not here at this moment... somewhere far...
Now another week is coming, and another struggle to work on something and achieve something in my life. An endless process, accompanied with an endless eagerness...

Zu Teilen...

A week marked with laziness and blown mind because of the heat. I'm seriously having issues regarding my workplace; I started to reduce my "respect" to it, as if there is any already anyway. I'm skipping some days to do what I consider a more important job for me, regarding this blog, photography, and do some studies regarding my conlangs and phonology. Not sure how long this status would last, but in such summer and heat, and such disrespect for the admins who barely know what is science, which for, I spent 6 years of my life in this college - it is hard to tell if I can regain any respect back.
In the meantime, I'm on the path of doing some new set of experiments with my camera but yet I'm not ready to put on the pictures here; till the moment of typing this there are no shots yet! But hopefully something would be ready for the next week. However, I did a little tutorial for tone splitting which you can read below under Split It!, if you like this technique!

Crescent Beach

It was back in April when I worked with this panorama on the beach at night, in a place that I commonly call The Secret Spot. This panorama, which was majorly done by continuous long exposures ranging from 2 to 4 minutes, and took around 2 hours to be done - it was done in several formats and projections. Except of one which I suddenly remembered!

Mare Lunare

The forgotten projection was the Globe or Circular projection of the same panorama. I seldom use this projection to show panoramas because of the limited view, and hence, the limited creativity aspect that can be controlled with such projection. The projection is circular mainly and the background is transparent (if saved in a file format that supports it). Because of this circular shape, some features might look cut instead of being highly distorted. However, I decided to take a chance at it, specially that this is one of the last panoramas done before the advent of summer. Sorry, I mean hell.

Crescent Beach

Once achieved, it was really hard to pick up a suitable angle. Moreover, it was apparent that a crescent shape would form but there was a dilemma should it be made out by the sand or the sky. After changing the aspect (in terms of rotations) I've finally decided that I should make it with the sand portion of the panorama. In editing the panorama later, I've worked with many layers to remove color casts, increase contrast, and most importantly, brighten the sand portion of the image and suppress the luster of the sky just a bit to pronounce the crescent more. The formation of the crescent though wasn't quite good enough because of the connection between its ends on the far right. I think I've made a mistake in making the sand crescent here look directly to the right (i.e. in a right angle). Probably something twisted and tilted a bit would give more dynamic view and interaction with the eyes. Anyway, it is an experience, and hopefully the impression and knowledge shall be memorized for future work!

Split It!

As you may now know (if you are a follower), I've been working on converting some images to B&W and also using Tone Splitting specifically. Tone splitting provides a new taste and flavor to the B&W; Maybe I can call it the next level of tinting a B&W image.
For those who know nothing about it already, Split Tones, or Tone Splitting, is a technique to divide the highlights and the shadows to two different colors. Even though the technique, theoretically, can be applied to any images, but it is more apparent and more resilient in the arena of B&W images rather than colored ones.
Usually this is done in RAW editing phase, but sometimes we do need to edit a JPG file, thus I had to work out some way to split the tones "manually" if so to say. This method might not be as accurate as editing directly in RAW, but it accomplishes the look somewhat. I'll describe it below.

I. Open the image file (in Photoshop of course). Here, I will presume it is a colored image already. I'll be dealing with one of my old images: Harmonie.

Harmonie

II. You can duplicate the background layer to feel safe (Ctrl+J) or you can work directly on this layer. The choice is yours. However, we add then a Black and White adjustment layer by clicking button (1) and picking (2) from the menu. The tones are then adjusted to taste (3), but pay attention to the details and how the highlights and shadows are connected!

Click to Enlarge

III. Then we add a Threshold layer to split the highlights and shadows of the image. Click the button again (4), and pick (5) for the list, and adjust the tones to taste (6). Again, pay attention to the highlights and shadows here. I suppose there should be a balance between the two at this stage but it is after all a matter of taste.

Click to Enlarge

 

 IV. As the layer Threshold 1 is highlighted, press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E (altogether!). This will merge all the layers in a new layer on the top (7), then turn off Threshold 1 (8) by clicking the eye icon beside it.

Click to Enlarge

V. While the new layer is still highlighted (i.e. selected), Press Ctrl+A (Select All), then Ctrl+C (Copy), and then Ctrl+D (Remove Selection). Now, the new merged layer should be stored in the memory (to paste it in the next step).

VI. We, again, add and adjustment layer (9), and this time we pick the Photo Filter adjustment layer (10). After the layer is placed on top as usual, turn off the previous layer (11). While holding Alt, click on the layer mask of the Photo Filter layer (12) and the page turns white. Press Ctrl+V to paste the image we copied earlier in step 5. After pasting make sure you press Ctrl+D to remove the selection. Now pick a color in any way you wish and tone it as you like (13) - this should be controlling the highlights. It might be a good idea to keep Preserve Luminosity option checked.

Click to Enlarge

VII. After finishing setting the color and its level in the previous step, directly duplicate this layer by pressing Ctrl+J (14), and then directly press Ctrl+I (15) to reverse the colors of the layer mask. This is, now, the shadows controller. Now set a new color and its tone (16). If the dialog didn't appear, just double click the icon of the layer (i.e. the one beside the eye icon).

Click to Enlarge

At this point, the main process is over. The rest is experimenting with the colors chosen for highlights and shadows, and their strengths. Some extra stuff can be done are:
1. Adding Vibrance adjustment layer to increase the vibrancy of the colors.
2. Adding Contrast adjustment layer to increase (or decrease contrast).
3. Do a slight Gaussian Blur to the layer masks of the Photo Filter adjustment layers; and the amount is dependent on the image size of course. This is to soften the edges where the two tones of highlights and shadows make a contact. The blur is better be of the same magnitude for both layer masks.

Just another halfie.
Tones split between blue
(highlights) and
yellow (shadows).
The balance here is shifted
to the shadows more, making
the blue tint of the image in the
highlights not directly visible.

These are just some suggestions. Generally, I've been using the concept of "complimentary colors" in doing split toning jobs to my images; that is use one color for highlight and use its complimentary color for the shadows (e.g. yellow-blue). However, this is, of course, not a rule. But a good and logical way to start. It would be useful to know (and memorize) the circle of colors!
All in all, even with split tones, it might look like a work of tinting a B&W image sometimes, specially when the weight of tinting shifts to one side (i.e. to highlights more than shadows or vice versa) in an obvious way. For example, Just another halfie on the left was split-toned (in RAW format) between Blue/Yellow^*. Yet, to achieve the look that I really liked, the balance was shifted towards shadows more than highlights making the image look generally yellow, but with a slight tint of blue on the skin which can be hard to notice for some eyes; this is noticeable only when the blue is removed and the skin becomes "white" - only then, the difference to the eyes would be clear. When I did this experiment, it was obvious how important is to add a highlight tint (specially a tint from the complimentary color) even if it was hard to notice easily by the eyes. Even a slight amount of complimentary color into the image, whether in shadows or highlights, can produce a pleasant contrast that gives some more strength to the image. I had the advantage here to suppress the green background by toning the Green tones down; I think I was lucky for not wearing green that day!
Beside using complimentary colors in split toning, sometimes I do get the idea of the major colors in the image itself; this is if it was majorly ruled by two major colors.

Orbis Fidei
Original Panorama.
Majorly dominatedby yellow and blue.

Orbis Fidei
After splitting tones using Yellows for highlights,
and blues (cyan) for shadows.

Here comes another reason why manual tone splitting can be useful. Panoramas are not RAW files to be edited in RAW and their tones can't be split there. Thus, manual work is due (whether with high resolution TIFFs or regular JPGs). I'm still digging in the past panoramas to find those which are suitable for such technique.

*It is a convention, to myself, when mentioning colors of tone splitting, to mention the color of the highlights first, then of the shadows.

Finale

Time is ticking, and I've finally finished the bulk of the work with the Irish Visa. What is left now is the other half of the bulk! That is a proper photo for the application, and a 6-month record from my bank (to prove I can support myself there). I'm planning on leaving around the end of September. Though 3 months are ahead, but I have to hurry up with these tasks and send my documents (I think to the embassy in Abu Dhabi now) because such procedures might take 8 weeks as they stated; i.e. 2 months!

I have recently received a surprising phone call from an interior designer which quite swept me through in surprise - could this really be a start of a business trend? I'm not quite sure what is the next step, as the other side asked to arrange a meeting, which would probably fall within Ramadhan. The mention of panoramas, as he stated, gave him more ideas than he was thinking of. Anyway, I've left organizing a meeting for him to schedule and I just have to sit and wait I guess. If this could happen for real, I might have some sort of condolences regarding the despicable workplace I'm dipped in.
As for now, I'll just sit and watch my life, and work with my camera as much as possible. My dreams, myself, and I... with my camera... is all what is left for me here...