Before I even got that into photography I had a program called Microsoft Picture It Publishing. It took seven disks to install and you could make anything from it. I believe it’s main draw was supposed to be its variety of card templates. I used it for photo editing, which at the time, I was much more into than the actual taking of the photos. And despite the fact that it was a clunky and crude program, I got fairly good at navigating its often confusing way of doing things. And as with every kid playing around with a photo editing program, I quickly discovered, and was fascinated by, selective color.
I’m sure you’ve all seen selective coloring, or spot color, before. It’s a image that has mostly been made black and white, but one thing, or some parts of the photo, are left colored. The result is your eye being immediately drawn and held by the part of the image that has color; that part immediately becomes the focus of the image. Here is one of the first photos I ever used spot color on. (I was immensely proud of this photo at the time, which was taken 2007 or earlier)
Then around the same time I really began to get interested in photographing people, my brother got his senior photos done. And one of the options the photo studio had in their brochure was to do selective coloring on an image for an added fee. Which again got me excited about it, because I could do something the pros offered and if I wanted to be a photographer I could offer it too! So when I shot some photos for my sister’s college graduation, one of the images I was particularly fond of was the photo below. (I was also pretty proud of what I thought to be an amazing photo…my opinion has change quite a bit in the three years since then.)
My excitement about spot coloring photos has since faded, although I do occasionally use it. I browsed briefly through my 365 day project and found a few selective color photos, but not many.
But lately, whenever I see a photo with selective coloring, I often wonder whether it really is an artistic technique or just a tacky gimmick. Perhaps it depends on how well done both the photo and the spot color editing are. A lot of the time it seems like the photographer is just trying to salvage an uninspired image by using selective color to spice it up. I’ll admit that most of the photos I’ve use selective color on lately were editing that way because they just weren’t good enough without it.
And then sometimes, the technique is just executed badly, as in the photo below.
While photos like this make me cringe, there are photos where selective color is actually done well.
So what do you think? Do you like selective color or not? Answer my poll on it and leave me your opinion in the comments section.
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