Introducing a DIY Calibration Chart

Why You Should Calibrate Your Screens (And How This Little Chart Helps)

Ever wondered why a photo looks perfect on your phone but flat and washed out on your TV or a print? It is not you. It is your screens. Even the best cameras, monitors and printers cannot capture or display the full range of light and colour that your eyes can see. That is where a simple calibration card comes in, and once you understand how to keep your equipment acceptably accurate.

Photographers talk about dynamic range, the span of light a device can capture, measured in stops. Each stop doubles the amount of light involved. Your eyes can handle around 15 stops. A good modern camera manages 9 to 11. Most TVs and monitors only reach 7 to 9, and even quality printers top out around 6.5.

That gap matters. When a device cannot handle the full range, it clips the extremes. Dark tones near black collapse into pure black. Bright highlights blow out into pure white. Detail and colour simply disappear at both ends.

Colour is its own puzzle, it doesn’t really exist as something physical, and there are two divergent interpretations of what creates it. How a device captures and reproduces colour is pure physics and maths of energy and light. How your brain perceives colour is much more personal, shaped by cognitive psychology and the lighting around you. Neither view is more "correct" than the other. The calibration chart will not give you laboratory precision, but it will nudge your average colour rendering and tonal contrast in the right direction.

Step One: Calibrate the Input (Your Camera or Phone)

Tonal calibration, getting the brightness and darkness levels right, is the single most useful adjustment you can make for realistic photos.

Look at the calibration chart and you will see a grey scale gradient running from black to white, with small grey rectangles down each side. On the right, the rectangles start light grey and get progressively lighter toward an almost white target. On the left, they start darker and step down toward a very dark target. Each little step represents a 2 percent shift in light intensity.

Here is the trick: point your camera or phone at the chart and check how many of those rectangles you can actually distinguish. You will probably lose a few, especially near the very dark or very light end. That is completely normal. Digital sensors simply cannot match your eyes' range, and cameras are designed to expose for an average middle grey tone anyway, so they will usually “clip” the extreme tones.

Start with your camera on an automatic exposure mode (A, P, or the green auto setting on a DSLR or mirrorless camera, or the default mode on your phone). Manual exposure is not necessary here.

Check the result somewhere you can actually see the screen properly. Camera and phone screens are notoriously hard to read in bright daylight, so review indoors or in shade.

If you can only spot a few rectangles on the dark side, the chart probably needs more light. If you cannot add light, try adjusting the exposure value (EV) on your camera or phone instead.

Advanced camera calibration (colour accuracy, white balance, lens distortion, sharpness) varies wildly between brands and models, so this card will not replace a proper colour profiling system. What it can do is flag obvious problems, like a consistent colour cast, or tonal issues worth investigating further.

Step Two: Calibrate the Output (Your Screens)

Now views a photo of the ca on your monitor, TV, phone or projector. This is where brightness and contrast come in, usually tucked inside a picture or display settings menu, accessed through a settings button or remote.

Start with brightness. Push it up and the screen gets lighter, revealing more rectangles on the dark side. Pull it down and you will see more detail in the light rectangles instead. The goal is a balance where you can see a good number of steps on both sides.

Next comes contrast. This stretches or compresses the range of visible tones. Getting it right is a bit of a balancing act between contrast and brightness. If you can see plenty of rectangles on one side but hardly any on the other, nudge the contrast up slightly, then pull brightness back to rebalance.

A quiet warning here: if you regularly use your screen in a bright room with strong light behind you, chances are your contrast is already cranked to maximum, which clips both ends of the tonal range. If that sounds like you, reset contrast to the middle, adjust brightness first, then slowly bring contrast back up while rebalancing.

Screen technology has changed a lot over the decades, from old cathode ray tubes to today's LED and LCD panels, and every manufacturer implements these settings a little differently. Materials also degrade over time, which is worth remembering if your screen seems duller than it used to be. When in doubt, the factory reset option is usually a safe, well calibrated starting point.

Step Three: Get Your Colours Right

Once tone is sorted, it is time for colour. Look for settings labelled colour, tint, colour temperature, hue, saturation or intensity, though the exact wording  and what bit changes depends on your device.

Saturation is often cranked up by default to compensate for ambient light, so check the row of coloured dots on the card. They should look natural sitting against the mid grey background, not artificially intense.

Many screens also offer picture modes such as vivid, natural, cinema, standard or eco. These bundle together saturation, brightness and contrast settings, so cycling through them is often the fastest way to find something that suits your eyes, though be aware they can override the careful brightness and contrast work you just did.

The chart itself has a colour temperature section running from warm reds, oranges and yellows through to cool blues and violets, sitting on a clean white background. If that background does not look properly white, you likely have a colour cast issue.

Small reference squares next to this section are arranged in 5 percent increments of colour strength. The top row handles colour temperature, from yellow through to blue purple. The bottom row handles “tint”, from magenta through to green. The middle row, goes from a red to a cyan .

To use them, simply check which square looks whitest against the background. If the background leans slightly green, for instance, a square on the magenta side will probably look closer to true white. That tells you which direction to nudge your tint control.

One last thing worth remembering: your room's ambient lighting will influence how you judge all of this. Do not calibrate for magenta while sitting in a room bathed in green light. Match your adjustments to the conditions you will normally be viewing in, and you will end up with a screen that shows your photos the way they are meant to be seen.

You should now have better screens to judge your images, that may be photographing your art, a portrait or to judge your results as you edit or modify your photographs with filters and app.

Interesting stories about the colour Caput Mortuum

One of the pastels used in a recent zoom demonstration by Lyn Mellady for the Pastel Society of Victoria came in for a bit of discussion. The evocative name Caput Mortuum conjures a mysterious aura, Latin for “dead head” or “worthless remains”. The name most likely originates from alchemical traditions, where it referred to the residue left after distillation, symbolising what was left behind when the “noble” elements had ascended. Perhaps picking up a bit of spiritual importance in transforming alchemical waste (death, decay) into artistic material (new life).

Despite its ominous name, the pigment itself is rich and versatile. It is identified in medieval paintings and manuscripts, and was widely used in oil paints and fabric dyes, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries. Artists prized it for its earthy tone, opacity, and ability to create dramatic shadows and depth. Its popularity peaked in religious and Romantic art, often appearing in robes, backgrounds, and symbolic compositions.

Mummy Brown and the Pre-Raphaelites

In the 1800s, mummy brown, also called caput mortuum, a pigment reportedly made from ground-up Egyptian mummies, was widely used by European artists for its rich, warm tone and excellent transparency. It was especially popular among the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of English painters who sought to revive the detail and vibrancy of early Renaissance art.

One of the most striking anecdotes involves Edward Burne-Jones, a prominent Pre-Raphaelite artist. According to multiple sources, Burne-Jones was horrified when he learned that the pigment he had been using was made from actual human remains. His nephew, Rudyard Kipling, recalled the moment in his autobiography:

“He [Burne-Jones] descended in broad daylight with a tube of ‘Mummy Brown’ in his hand, saying that he had discovered it was made of dead Pharaohs and we must bury it accordingly. So we all went out and helped ... according to the rites of Mizraim and Memphis.”

This symbolic burial of the pigment in his garden marked a turning point in the ethical awareness of artists. Burne-Jones’s reaction wasn’t unique many artists began to abandon mummy brown as the supply of mummies dwindled and the moral implications became harder to ignore.

Sources for Further Reading

• Art UK: The Corpse on the Canvas – The Story of Mummy Brown
• Wikipedia: Mummy Brown
• JSTOR Daily: When Artists Painted with Real Mummies
• Explore more of Evie Hatch's insights in the Ask an Artist podcast interview 
• Or her writings on Jackson’s Art Blog.

I’ve been using the colour for some time, it’s a deep, brownish-purple pigment derived from iron oxide (Fe₂O₃), specifically hematite or a synthetic equivalent. It is a common hue in soft pastels, with most brands also offering hues in a couple of lighter tints. Unfortunately, it is less common today in other media such as oil, acrylic or watercolour paints. It’s a good colour for enriching and warming up shadows. Although it is not an intensely chromatic or bright colour, it does strike a pleasing simultaneous contrast with turquoise or stronger greens. Modern versions have variable opacity but are an excellent help to mix or emphasise clean neutral colours.

Some research assisted by Copilot (AI)

Chasing Light and Colour: The Magic of Rare Optical Phenomena

The pursuit of colour leads to unexpected places. What began as an attempt to recreate Oswald's colour circle evolved into a deeper appreciation for the rare and magical moments when nature reveals colours that exist at the very edge of human perception. From the laboratory discovery of Olo to the legendary green flash at sunset, these experiences remind us that the world of colour extends far beyond our everyday experience.

The Laboratory Meets the Beach

The connection between scientific colour discovery and natural observation became strikingly clear during my artworks at Venus Bay. The sea-green illuminated waves I sketched, created by late afternoon sunlight penetrating the surf, bore an uncanny resemblance to the Olo colour described in laboratory conditions, which matches Ostwald's Sea Green. Reminding me that the best artistic subjects often combine practical purpose with natural beauty.

This wasn't mere coincidence. Both phenomena involve precise conditions—specific angles, particular wavelengths, and the right environmental factors. The laboratory uses laser precision to activate cone cells in extraordinary ways, while nature uses the angle of the sun, the clarity of water, and the movement of waves to create equally extraordinary visual experiences.

The Elusive Green Flash

Nature exhibits other amazing colour phenomena such as the mysterious green flash—a brief burst of vivid green light that appears just as the sun disappears below the ocean horizon. At Venus Bay, with its north-south running beach and western ocean view, conditions are theoretically perfect for observing this rare event.

I've witnessed it once: a fleeting moment of intense green above the setting sun, gone almost before the eye could register it. The experience was so brief that I didn't have the opportunity to photograph it, yet the memory remains vivid. This phenomenon has been famously observed in Hawaii and Cornwall, locations that share Venus Bay's advantage of an unobstructed western horizon over open water.

The green flash occurs due to atmospheric refraction—the same physics that creates rainbows and mirages. As the sun sets, Earth's atmosphere acts like a prism, separating sunlight into its component colours. The green wavelength, being shorter than red but longer than blue, becomes visible for a split second as the sun's red light is blocked by the horizon while the blue light scatters into the atmosphere above.

The Science of Rare Colours

These phenomena—whether laboratory-created Olo or naturally occurring green flashes—share common characteristics. They exist at the boundaries of normal perception, require specific conditions to manifest, and challenge our understanding of how colour works.

The Olo discovery reveals that our eyes are capable of perceiving colours we never normally see. The specialised equipment required to create this experience highlights how much of the visible spectrum remains unexplored in terms of human perception.

Similarly, the green flash demonstrates how atmospheric conditions can reveal colours that exist in sunlight but are normally invisible to us. 

The emergence of AI-generated content about the Olo discovery represents another layer of this colour story.

What strikes me most about this entire journey—from filling a Wilcox palette to witnessing the green flash—is how it demonstrates the persistence of wonder in an age of technological explanation. Despite our sophisticated understanding of wavelengths, cone cells, and atmospheric optics, these colour phenomena retain their magic.

The sea-green waves at Venus Bay still take my breath away, regardless of my understanding of light refraction and wavelength. The green flash remains mysterious and beautiful, even when I comprehend the atmospheric physics involved. The Olo discovery fascinates not because it's inexplicable, but because it reveals new possibilities within our existing understanding.

Rob Candy's gift of the Wilcox palette initiated a journey I never anticipated. What seemed like a simple project to match colours became an exploration spanning historical colour theory, contemporary vision science, natural phenomena, and artificial intelligence.

The palette sits by my easel now, filled with pigments that approximate Oswald's 24-color circle. But its real value lies not in the colours themselves, but in the journey they inspired. From mixing stubborn phthalo pigments to capture elusive sea-green, to witnessing laboratory breakthroughs that reveal new dimensions of human vision, to standing on a beach waiting for that fleeting green flash—each experience deepened my understanding of colour's complexity and beauty.

In this age of digital reproduction and artificial intelligence, the rarest colours still require us to show up—whether in the laboratory or on the beach—and witness them with our own eyes. Some things, it seems, cannot be replicated or explained away, only experienced and celebrated.

see also Part 1 The Quest for Sea Green

Part 2 The Discovery of Olo

Part 3 AI, Technology and Traditional Observation

AI, Technology and Traditional Observation

 AI Enters the Conversation

The intersection of art, science, and technology became even more intriguing when I discovered an AI-generated "podcast" discussing the Olo discovery. Created using NotebookLM with Google's Gemini 1.5 model, it featured realistic male and female "hosts" providing a surprisingly good summary of the technology and theoretical aspects. 

WARNING : It runs for about 20 minutes and is worthwhile watching.

While the AI presentation contained inaccuracies—confusing device names with methods, occasionally getting technical details confused—typical misconceptions, like the Richard Dawkin's premonition of the discovery—it offered a far better starting point than the ill-informed clickbait posts "Scientist discover new colour" now flooding social media. The realistic conversation format makes complex scientific concepts accessible, but not totally trustworthy. Yet in this case, the so-called "deep dive" is impressive, hopefully the shape of things to come.

If you consider, yourself a careful observer you might spot telltale AI artifacts in the hosts' hand movements. Then again you might have already spotted the podcasts title "Deep Dive An AI Podcast" up in lights behind the presenters or the warning from YouTube "Altered or synthetic content" as the video starts.

Don't just accept what AI tells you—run it through your own filter first. Draw on your personal observations and whatever expertise you have, whether that's art, science, engineering, or any field you know well. AI is getting very impressive, but it's not infallible

see also Part 1 The Quest for Sea Green

Part2 The Discovery of Olo 

Part 4 The Magic of Rare Optical Phenomena

When Art Meets Science: The Discovery of Olo

Art and science have always been intertwined, but this connection has been reinforced in my recent experience with colour theory, painting, and an extraordinary scientific discovery. What began as sketches of surf rescue boats transformed into a meditation on the nature of colour itself.

From Sketch to Exhibition

My observations at Venus Bay, capturing the interplay between the red inflatable rescue boats and the sea-green illuminated waves, evolved into a series of paintings. The composition fascinated me—horizontal lines of waves contrasted against the strong diagonal of boats running up the surf, foam splashing dramatically in front.

I developed this theme through various sizes: sketches and smaller tests up to half-sheet paintings to perfect the colours and composition. Despite struggling with worsening eyesight, the work progressed well. The culmination was a submission to the Poetry of Watercolour exhibition at VAS, which was accepted—a gratifying validation of my ongoing colour exploration.

The Olo Discovery

Just weeks after my exhibition acceptance, an announcement emerged from the United States: scientists had discovered a new colour called "Olo." This wasn't just any colour discovery—it represented a new direction in how we understand human vision and colour perception.

I first heard of the discovery on local radio where Professor Ren Ng, originally from Melbourne, was interviewed, revealing something extraordinary. Olo isn't a colour we can see in everyday circumstances. It requires precise adjustments to how our eyes' cones are activated, specifically targeting mid-wavelength cones through sophisticated machinery.

The Science Behind the Sensation

They used a machine/system known as OZ Vision, after the equipment developer. This firstly has to map those cones, the eyes colour receptors in a tiny section of retina,.  Then, micro pluses of laser beams of very specific wavelengths—corresponding closely to turquoise and greenish turquoise colours—are directed at these cones. The S (shortwavelength) and L (longwavelength) responding cones were not targeted. Resulting in the viewer seeing an intensely vivid colour that closely resembles what Oswald called his "sea green." only much brighter.

What makes Olo particularly fascinating is its demonstration that colour sensation is essentially an illusion created by energy in the form of visible light of specific wavelengths. The discovery doesn't necessarily suggest colours exist outside the boundaries of the chromaticity diagram, or outside the rainbow as widely reported, but rather reveals new possibilities for how we might experience colour. While we may not see new ways to see a broader range of colours or artificial pigments immediately, the research opens possibilities for enhanced colour experiences, perhaps fixing colour-blindness and a deeper understanding of how our brains process visual information.

The name "Olo" is a little scientific geeky: 010, zero-one-zero representing the signal pattern to different cone types—0 signal to the S cones, 1 or full signal to the M cones, and 0 signal to the L cones. This precision underscores the scientific rigour behind what might otherwise seem like an abstract artistic concept.

Art as Scientific Method

Perhaps most remarkably, this experience demonstrates how artistic practice can parallel scientific inquiry. My methodical approach to colour matching, systematic observation of natural phenomena, and documentation through sketches mirrors the scientific methods in many ways.

The artist's patient observation of colour relationships, light conditions, and natural phenomena provides a different but equally valid path to understanding. When Rob Candy gave me that Wilcox palette, neither of us could have predicted it would lead to connections between 19th-century colour theory, contemporary surf rescue training, and 21st-century vision science.

This convergence reminds us that the boundaries between art and science are often artificial. Both disciplines seek to understand and represent reality, whether through pigment and brush or laser and laboratory equipment. The discovery of Olo proves that there are still new colours to be found—not just in nature, but in the remarkable machinery of human perception itself.

see also Part 1 The Quest for Sea Green

Part 3 AI, Technology and Traditional Observation

Part 4 The Magic of Rare Optical Phenomena

The Quest for Sea Green: Reconstructing Oswald's Colour System

When artist friend Rob Candy passed onto me a round Michael Wilcox palette—companion to Wilcox's book "Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green"—I was immediately struck by its resemblance to the Oswald colour circle. What seemed like a simple project to fill the 24-colour circle with my own watercolour pigments matching Oswald's colours turned into a fascinating journey through colour theory and the elusive nature of certain hues.  

The Challenge of Colour Matching

Researching the actual colours and layout to match the Wilcox wheel proved more challenging than anticipated. While reasonable examples of Ostwald's circle exist online, the colours captured and reproduced are, to put it politely, not very reliable. Matching small colour swatches is always difficult, but I was determined to fill the circle with original pigments from watercolour paint tubes I already owned.

Starting with the watercolour paints I had on hand, I managed to fill most pans, purchased a few additional tubes, and eventually had to mix a few colours myself. The result wasn't perfect, but it was a reasonable start that taught me valuable lessons about colour relationships, richest (highest chroma) colour mixes always came from mixes of adjacent pans. It was however, difficult to match the value (lightness or darkness) of colour shown on published wheels; frequently, my watercolour needed to be diluted.

Understanding Oswald's System

The concept behind Oswald's colour circle construction is rooted in opponent colour theory and four psychological colours: red, yellow, green, and blue. These form two pairs—red-green and yellow-blue—creating orthogonal axes in a planar graph.

In Oswald's work, his red was specifically a crimson red, while the green was what he frequently referred to as "sea green"—a bluish green or greenish turquoise. These colours formed the horizontal axis, with the magnitude representing colour intensity: one equalled the most intense red, while minus one represented the most intense green.

The vertical axis featured blue versus yellow, though Oswald famously struggled to find a yellowish blue that wasn't actually green. This challenge led to his systematic approach, with blue positioned on the base and yellow on the top.

The Birth of L*a*b Colour Space

Oswald's work included a third dimension—neutrals ranging from black (absence of light) through shades of grey to white. These three axes became known as L (lightness), a (yellow-blue axis) and b (red-green axis), forming what mathematicians and scientists among colour theorists embraced as the L*a*b colour model. It still forms the basis of the Natural Color System (NCS), and underlying metrics for colour grading in many cinema systems, demonstrating the lasting impact of Oswald's theoretical framework.

The Elusive Sea Green

Reasonable matches for most of Oswald's colour circle elements proved achievable, except for that troublesome sea green. Even after purchasing additional paint tubes, this greenish version of turquoise continued to elude me.

The solution came from mixing two adjacent colour elements: the notorious phthalo pigments that stain everything they touch—plastic palettes, synthetic brushes, and inevitably, fingers. These two "dangerous" but strong colours finally yielded a reasonable facsimile of Oswald's elusive sea green.

Nature's Colour Laboratory

The quest for sea green in nature took me down to Venus Bay. The surf beach runs essentially north-south, so late afternoon viewing faces west. In late summer and early autumn, when the sun angle is lowish, sunlight penetrates the waves, illuminating them with a beautiful turquoise, actually a green version of turquoise that even commercial pigments struggle to capture.

A slight offshore breeze lifts the waves, creating pure magic. This natural phenomenon provided the perfect subject matter for sketches, attempting to match these incredible colours with my developing colour chart. The scene was made even more dynamic by local lifesavers training in their IRBs (motorised surf rescue vehicles), jumping waves in displays of both skill and pure joy.

The sketches revealed something remarkable: they contained two important Oswald colours—the red of the inflatable rescue boat and the sea green of the illuminated waves. Ostwald's fundamental pair of complementary colours. The composition of horizontal wave lines contrasted with the strong diagonal of the boat created a perfect harmony of colour theory and natural beauty, proving that sometimes the best colour education comes not from books, but from patient observation of the world around us.

See also Part 2 The Discovery of Olo

Part 3 AI, Technology and Traditional Observation

Part 4 The Magic of Rare Optical Phenomena

A little bit about "Littles"

 I watched an interesting YouTube demonstration by Al Klein on the American Art School Live Channel about a little tool/technique he uses for plein air sketching. He creates what he calls “littles”. These are small colour studies/composition sketches/almost tonal studies. He creates them in his sketchbook and uses a small viewfinder frame that he made to be the exact ratio of his potential larger work later. 

His beautifully simple next step is to place the viewfinder on a blank sketchbook page and use the cutout area as a template and trace out the frame shape onto the page. Thus eliminating any virtual scaling in your brain when transferring your sketch to a larger studio work. It also helps firmly position the main shapes you observe into the correct position within the composition.

I don’t necessarily agree with all his terminology and explanation, for example, colour temperature is independent of tone. I prefer to limit the term tone to describe the difference between light and darkness. what I did like is the idea of a small sketch in the field that looks at seeing and defining those shapes of colour and tone. So I had to make up a couple of viewfinder frames that would suit any A5 sketchbook.  I like working initially in an A5 sketchbook on site with some basic tools, a small portable colour palette and a pencil. I have made up a variety of such kits based on cheaper A5 visual diaries/sketchbooks to do my little experiments in the field. I’ve also started using them pretty exclusively for my tonal studies in the style of Andy Evanson, these are just monochrome and all about understanding where to put the initial washers and how to join the various toned shapes. They definitely are not colour studies.

I happen to have some internal offcuts of Mat from frames and set about cutting my viewfinder frames. I’m not using sheet and half sheet sizes for my watercolours much anymore I tend to work in sizes A3, A4 and A5. So decided to try out some viewfinder cutouts based on smaller A-size ratios. I quickly dismissed the A6 size hole as it was too large, my arm wasn’t long enough. Basically, when you hold it in front of your eye it takes in too much of the view to be useful in terms of refining a decent composition. So I ended up cutting 2 frames, one with an A7 size hole and one with an A8 size hole. The A7 size is probably my favourite and works very well at roughly arm's length, you can swing it around and see the various compositions very quickly. The A7 viewfinder seems incredibly small but it’s very useful for zooming in and out, moving it closer or further from your eye and can make an outline for a very neat little colour study in your sketchbook.

The issue of finding the best framing is not just limited to plein-air artwork, it also applies to photography. The vast majority of folk still just lift the camera to their eye roughly centred on the subject they are photographing and press the shutter. A small amount of time spent changing the view (frame) can have remarkable results. Changing a ho-hum composition into something striking. This is really simple with a modern digital camera if they have a suitable LCD screen on the back to preview your test photograph and is really straightforward on any modern smartphone with a camera. Remember to try the zoom feature to get closer or a broader view. If you don’t have a zoom lens you can always zoom with your feet.

Waiting for better colour tools

Photographic software, particularly editing software, has been dominated by adjusting the RGB Red Green Blue numbers. But human perception of colour is slightly more complex in capturing filtered colours on a light sensor under bayer filters or viewing a screen of  LEDs light emittingdiodes, coloured red green and blue-ish . Further  many graphic artist had complained mixing coloursd in graphic software,  doesn’t necessarily create the same colours that you would expect in a mix using pigment paints.

In the end I had to just live with these limitations.

However things are changing a few graphic applications will now more naturally mix pigments for graphic software. What I wish to discuss here is a surprise addition to the update 1.21 to Lumina Neo. It includes a new section called Color Harmony. The two top sliders will be very familiar to ligthroom Photoshop users but with slight different colours on the top slider, which is not called Tint but Brilliance. Instead of starting at green and moving to a magenta it runs for a bluish grey green to a red. I suspect is colour harmony is very much inspired/controlled by the NCS system which still dominates many European countries.

Colour Contrast is something I will also discuss later as it deserves a bit more investigation.

Split colour versions of pigments, as warmer or cooler versions when mixing intermediate colours, have been a long standing practise of how artists have traditionally bought a lot of drama and harmony  into their artisticworks. On a flat surface, like a painting or photograph, cool colours tend to recede warm colours tend to come forward.  

Portrait photographs have known this even back in the film days. Using various filters of coloured lights to enhance their work and bring the sitter to life. In the smartphone world there are “warmify” apps to liven your selfie and deeply buried option on most digital cameras to alter th colour temperature of the photo output. Cannon is renowned for their “warmer” sensors. These digital tools usually apply to the whole image

Why these Split Colour Warmth sliders are different they change warm and cool components of your picture separately. This is a bigger deal than I originally thought. Here is a simple example of a young bougainvillea “bloom”, actually just new leaves that are orange before turning magenta, taken at my studio window. I’m a little amazed how much impact can be achieved when you separately adjust the whoops and cool have on the photo. I’m expecting to have a lot of fun with these sliders.

 

Colour Balance adds nuanced refinements, combining tonal/luminance steps with more detail colour adjustments. It is also an area I wish to explore further.

 Finally I should point out the Film Strip at the bottom of my screen capture above, this has been a long asked for addition to Luminar Neo. It allows you to see several thumbnails of adjacent images in the catalogue and you can rate and compare them directly here

Unlocking Creativity or Daydreaming

 “I’ve been planning a large painting of flamingos for awhile. We artists are mocked for daydreaming but so much of painting is, as I like to call it “internal visualisation” of a finished piece. A large proportion of the planning is not physical work on paper or canvas but turning it over in your mind. Unseen. Definitely not daydreaming.”

from Catherine Ingleby’s article in the upcoming July copy of The Artist magazine

Her article really connects with what I have been absorbed about how creativity strikes. She highlights three things that help her. They start with planning and preparatory work organising everything, which she believes will eventually bring a freshness to your paintings. Secondly, she suggests converting photos of your work into monochrome black or white, if the painting doesn’t work in black and white it’s unlikely to be successful in colour. I fully concur with this observation. Thirdly but quiet important she says try doing your own colour charts just using two or three of your favourite pigments, she suggests you might be very surprised how much you learn.

In the article she also limits herself to only really three tonal ranges light midtone and dark but bounded by black and white. She also limits her palette to two or three colours and things they can mix. I think three or four would still be fine.

Mastering the Rainbow - What is Colour?

Welcome to "Mastering the Rainbow" - a captivating exploration of the enigmatic world of colour. This serialized journey, spanning blog posts here and on my website, YouTube videos, and occasional social media posts, is a progress report of my decade-long quest to unravel the mysteries of colour and its elusive nature.

As a geologist and retired part-time lecturer, I've long been fascinated by the scientific method and its ability to shed light on the intricate workings of our world. However, as I delved deeper into the question "What is colour?", I found myself venturing down a rabbit hole that grew increasingly complex and paradoxical. Contrary to our everyday experience, I've come to realize that colour, as we know it, is not a tangible entity but a highly personal illusion. Colour is not a real thing.

In this series, we'll embark on a historical odyssey, revisiting the groundbreaking discoveries of those who came before us, many of which I unwittingly rediscovered myself – a testament to the cyclical nature of scientific inquiry.

We'll dive into the various representations and models of colour, navigating through the controversies and debates that have shaped our understanding. Brace yourselves, for nothing is more contentious than the application of colour wheels. Fear not, for I shall embrace these geometric shapes as tools to unify disparate ideas and shed light on the counterintuitive aspects of what we call colour theory.

Through practical examples and hands-on fun, you'll have the opportunity to convince yourself of the profound insights that await. Whether you're an artist, a photographer, or simply a curious soul, this series promises to broaden your perspective on the kaleidoscopic world that surrounds us.

The vibrant realm of colour is a wondrous canvas upon which we create and experience art. Join me on this journey, and together, we'll unlock the secrets of the rainbow,

Pastel Plein Air Kit Colour Selection

I’ve rearranged my soft pastel plein air kit (actually just two plastic boxes with a minimal set of useful colours in ”half sticks” that I might find handy for sketching). Making them into a set of the 6 primary colours I use (RGB + CYM), plus a neutral greyish column and a couple of columns of earth colours. Within each colour group, I have something intense along with lighter and darker tonal variations including very soft and harder composition pastels

Let's see how I go. I’m sure to need to change out and swap a few sticks. BUT the new arrangement looks nice.

An updated Studio :: Painted & Decluttered

I'm still hobbling around a bit after a fall last month, nut these seemed the perfect time to repaint the bedroom I an using as my studio (its been accumulating junk for 25 years first as my office and them as a craft/junk room and eventually my studio)/ there was a lot to clean out (it was the council's hard rubbish collection) and the biggest ting I wanted to do was repaint, specifically to a neutral colour. I didn't mind the burgandy but it played havoc when trying to match colours and calibrate my computer screen.

I had decided on the Neutral Grey that photographers often call (18% grey card) to check colur cast and also exposure time. My theory is that this will help me with colour mixing. Very fortuiosly I visited Bunnings and got 4 litres of a nice neutral grey as close to the photographic refernce card as I could judge.

The clustered was both easier and harder to deal with. The guidig principal though is I only bring back the things I will be using and for which there is a defined place to store them. So that is dominately blank canvases, paper and sketch books. I also have watercolour and acrylic paints, brushes and accessories, pens, pencils and pastels. There are open book shelves, a slick stainless steel set of draws and a file cabent to hold all these tings. 

I also kept the old desk a a work area and place to "stack" my computer and I am intending to mount an old large flat screen tv on the wall as my main computer monitor. Still a bit of work to do here.

Colour Composition - complimentary colours

Complimentary colours, those on opposite sides of the colour wheel generally make for an interesting composition.

Color Matters is an excellent site to brush on some of the basics of colour theory

Colour Compostion

To help you break the focus on leading lines and rule of thirds and other compositionaspects oversaold to photographers and free your mind for a little creativity. Pick up your camera and take a walk (might just be around the house or your back yard.

Look for strong colours. Maybe they might be complimentary colours (that bounce off each other, The red and blue pegs) or analugous (similar in hue, the sky and blue peg)

VIOLET Colour #photoassignment

Violet (that blue shade of purple) is not common in nature. There can be those fleeting moments at sunset, and a few flowers. However there are lots of manufactured materials that are coloured lilac to violets. The trouble is this not a fashionable colour at the moment. "Its so last year".

So capturing something violet might just be the hardest colour challenge of the week.

DEEP BLUE Colour #photoassignment

Deep Blue (Indigo in  Newton's Rainbow) happens in a magic way when you take your image after dark. Particularly if you photograph during the Blue Hour (which is the hour or so after sunset (or before sunrise). The eye might see the sky as dark but your camera can capture a rich deep blue with the right exposure.

If you haven't photographed at night, try it tonight. First, a warning, your camera's automatic exposure settings may not work. So you will probably need to experiment with a lower f-stop number, a slower speed and/or a higher ISO.  Rather than give you general numbers, I would encourage you to change that mode dial to M (manual) and start experimenting. To begin make changes that give you more light, then refine in little steps till you capture that beautiful rich blue.

BLUE Colour #photoassignment

Looking in my camera bag I can see some important stuff for keeping my Camera Healthy and Clean, which just happens to be Blue. For the lens there are the blower and lens pen and that black microfiber cloth supplied with your camera. The blue "fannel" is also microfiber and ideal to wipe down the outside of the camera (every day after use). You can wash microfiber cloths in the washing. The Blue zip wallet has a spare battery and extra SD cards.

Camera hygiene can be as important as washing your hands as well.

YELLOW colour #photoassignment

I want to photograph something strongly yellow in my home. However most of the candidates I've photographed before.  Hmm. Suddenly it was after dark and this jaunty metal cockatoo was the only yellow thing I could see.

Still he takes an ok photo.

Colour #photoassignment Finding Orange in the Sunset

This was a little easier, I was counting on a good sunset and waited for the strongest colour. Ok, I'm a little restricted in the view to the west but I much better views than a lot of folk in single room isolation or locked down. Still, there is beauty in watching the sunset.

RED Colour #photoassignment

Don't Eat Me

I took the baby tomatoes from the fridge and placed them over a green cloth (the pale green makes the red look redder) and then got two hole center stamps out from the hole punch added eyeballs with a black felt pen. The tomatoes where cold so condensation on them held the eyes in place.

The Colour #photoassignment post.