gels and photoshop

[jims pictures]

<p>Hello:<br>

I've been reading about gels and flashunits: changing the color for mood or specific things. I understand that a person can change a lot in CS5 using the tone and color controls. How is this duifferent then using gels? There must be some advantage. I just can't get my head around it, I know I'm missing something. Thanks for any information.<br>

Jim C</p>

<p> </p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

Gels on lights are useful in two related ways.

 

1) Gel your light(s) so that they match either the general lighting in your composition or if there are a couple of

different types of lighting in the scene gel to oneof them. This approach makes white balancing either in raw

processing or post-processing in Photoshop easier.

 

2) Gel your lighting to create an area specific color contrast to the background in order to call attention to the lit

subject.

 

While you can simulate either effect in post-production i find it tedious to do so. On the other hand using layers to do

the color correction or color relationship exaggeration is more easily tunable or reversible.

[hjoseph7]

<p>There are allot of reasons to use Gels over flash rather than photoshop, for one thing the unpredictability of gels is often hard to reproduce in PS. I'm not saying it can't be done in PS it just wont be as beleivable. Gels can be used for color correction or to add special effects.</p>

<p>For example let's say you are photographing a scene under fluorescent lighting. The flourescent bulbs cast a greenish cast, so you set the WB preset on your digital camera to "flourescent". What the preset WB filtration does is try to balance out the green by adding mangenta it's complement color . Unfortunately, sometimes the picture come out a little too pinkish or mangenta looking, especially when it comes to skin tones.<br>

<br />To revert this at the camera level, you can add a #30 green filter to the flash, which would give you more accurate colors. Gels can also be used when shooting under harsh tungsten streets light at night. You can shoot RAW or fiddle around with Color Balance, but using gel filters is allot easier.<br>

<br />Studio photographers often add colored gels to their Kick Lights to add mood, or drama or to change the background color. Again these things can be reproduced in PS, but can become very time consuming or not very beleivable.</p>

<p>Her is a picture where I used a red gel with my Canon 550Ex to change the mood somewhat. I hope it didn't come out too dark.</p><div></div>

[jims pictures]

<p>Thanks very much for the informative answers...Yea, if I don't have to go to layers, I'm happy!<br>

Jim C.</p>

[jcuknz]

<p>Surely if you use adjustment layers and grads in editing then you have precise control over what is happening instead of the hit and miss approach of doing it in camera. <br>

Doing it in-camera is fine if you know what you are doing but otherwise it is a gamble on getting it right.</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Other than for dramatic/theatrical effect, the main reason I'd gel a light source is to avoid hours of work later, trying to get the light hitting both sides of (for example) a human face to look natural. Life's too short to spot-edit color temps on a hundred images involving skin, white clothing, etc. <br /><br />30 seconds to gel the flash, or 3 (or 30!) hours editing for possibly awkward results ... a no brainer. That said, hamfisted use of gels can look awful, and because that light is of a narrower spectrum, you often can't fix it later. So use gels judiciously. Have a <em>reason</em> to use them. </p>

[craig_shearman1]

<p>Matt hits the point exactly.<br />The most basic use of gels on a flash is to match the flash to the existing lighting conditions so that you only have one white balance to deal with in the picture rather than two. You can easily correct overall white balance in photoshop but if you have mixed white balance in a photo you're in for lots of editing work.<br />Most common example in my experience in my former newspaper life is that you show up for a press conference, speech, etc., and it's lit for TV. Standard TV lights are 3200 degree tungsten while flash is plus or minus 5500 degree daylight. So you put a CTO (orange) gel on your flash and it matches the TV lights perfectly. Or you're shooting in an office, factory, etc., lit by fluorescent. Your flash is going to be the main exposure but the background will look green if you WB for the flash. So you put a fluorescent gel (greenish) over your flash and balance for fluorescent.</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

<blockquote>

<p><em> if I don't have to go to layers, I'm happy!</em><br /><em>Jim C.</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Until late last year I used to feel that way too Jim, but once I learned to work with layers and with simple white ( conceals the underlying layer(s)) or black ( reveals the underlying layer(s)) painted masks, I realized that layers are just about the most powerful tool in Photoshop. </p>

[jims pictures]

<p>Hey, I don't mind layers, really! I've learned SO SO much since the time two years ago I asked a friend: "<strong>What's a megabyte in relationship to a camera and how do you process it?" </strong>(!!) I hadn't touched a camera since my OM-2 loaded with Kodachrome. I read a lot of books and asked a lot of questions in these forums. Now I'm pretty familiar w/ CS5 and starting into indoor portraiture! Thanks to everyone for the help!<br>

Jim C</p>

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