Looking at it from another perspective (the framers) one can take an image and either destroy it or enhance it by the matte(s) frames and lighting.

We have to develop the notion that a photograph is an object to be looked at, to be treasured for it's own sake, as sculpture, painting or any other object, like an Oriole or Cardinal for instance. Revel in the joyfulness of that, no matter the subject. Make it work.

That applies to many art forms. I once sat down at a Steinway that had just been freshly tuned. Checking out the tuning, I started with some scales then switched to arpeggios and suddenly, I had an appreciative audience.  They just sat and listened, let the sheer joy of the wonderful sound of a Steinway take hold.

How many of us can do that with a photograph? Edward Weston did it; check out Pepper #30. Is it a pepper, or....just a photograph? Irving Penn did it. Look at his platinum prints of cigarette butts, picked up from the street.

Experiencing a photograph is first a revelation,; I am compelled to put every thing else aside and suspend disbelief. If that doesn't happen, I walk away. When it does, the entire content of that image together with the paper itself, the whole becomes greater than the sum of it's parts.

That is the final truth.

Tai Lao wrote:

ttttt

As I suspected, it would seem that followers of Dan Margulis are behind this. 

I have Dan's LAB book and find it highly intestering. I find that the RGB model used by ACR works fine for the vast majority of my work and rarely convert to LAB in Photoshop. However, opponent color models did not originate with Dan, but can be traced back to the German philosopher Goethe in 1810 and expanded by Herring in 1892.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process

Our color photoreceptors (the cones) and digital cameras use the RGB model, but opponency is introduced by the bipolar cells in the retina, with further processing in the optic radiations and visual cortex. The opponent colors are approximately red vs green, blue vs yellow, and black vs white. Red and blue are perceived as magenta, and blue and green produce cyan. RedGreen and YellowBlue are not normally perceived as such, but can be generated under certain conditions (see the Wikipedia article and look up a recent article in Scientific American).

Keeping these facts in mind, it is reasonable to presume that some color edting situations would be more easily done with the opponent LAB model rather than RGB, taking advantage of the psychophysiology of human color perception. LAB readouts and color controls in ACR might be useful in some situations.

Regards,

Bill

I would hate to tell you the number of deletes I've done the "morning after" over the years! Adams had an interesting phrase covering this, although he meant it with respect to the let down looking at images after the shoot:

Enthusiasm for a subject many times masks a clear concept of it.

Probably not the accurate quote, but close enough.

Morning afters can be a real bummer!

Goethe on color should be better understood because, as opposed to Newton, who made his observations based on the color spectrum, Goethe was concerned with the perception of color. There is a distinction, and individuals concerned with both physics like Werner Heisenberg and mathematics, like Kurt Godel, took an interest in it. Newton studied the diffraction effects by setting a prism on a piece of paper, Goethe did his by holding the prism to his eye.

Of course, Newton won out as his theory could be quantified where Goethe is less so. I don't think Goethe's work could be called a theory in the way Newton's could, so the study of color proceeded from the study of the color spectrum ala Newton.

So here we are trying to deal with the perception because, after all, that's what we do as photographers and painters, but using Newton analysis.

I suspect that the eye/brain perception of color phenomenon is strictly survival based, the need to be able to positively ID objects according to their color was vital, and under varying lighting conditions. Now, we use it as a means of expression beyond basic survival needs, and we find ourselves having to hold certain conditions steady in order to produce work that is consistent from day to day, at least commercially. I for one would, if I could, eschew this as a fundamental condition that must be met, but even producing as an art form, I cannot avoid this influence. So I look to a variety of methods, from RGB to HSL to LAB, even to exotic systems like scene referred.

Sometimes it is a great relief to instead, push the grayscale button!

Message was edited by: Hudechrome

Let me correct myself here.

I don't think Goethe's work can be called a Scientific Theory. A more general use of the word Theory could encompass Goethe's work, in the sense that we have theological theory or theoria. Synonyms include speculation and conjecture. In mathematics a conjecture is not the same as a theory. Goldbachs  Conjecture is probably the most famous unsolved problems in numbers theory. So, imho, Goethe's work falls somewhere between a theory and a conjecture, leaning pretty close to conjecture. We can all "prove" that he is right by repeating his experiment, but mere observation is insufficient to classify our observation as a theory. OTOH, there are many mathematical conjectures that have been proven or disproved, moving them into either theory or oblivion.

Our problem comes down to this. We can speak of "Red" but to me it's not Red  but reddishness, or greenishness . At some point we can all agree that we are not looking at blue but purple etc.

Anyway, we have come a long way to handling managing color but we are not there yet. I'm not sure there is a there there.