Topic: where can I get more pins???!?

[williamtheis]

pinning colors is great but I have so few pins and really don't reference pictures with colors to generate a pin FROM.  I would be interested in pins for "greens" like a variety of trees, "blue" skys from other places, other natural subjects than the nature.zip set, which is the only set I've found and only has a grand total of about 15 pins.

where can I get more pins for natural subjects?

Bill

[Greg Groess]

Bill,

Have you checked out the goodies folder under Curvemeister?  There are tons of pins in there...
You might also make your own.  you can save any alt-click selection to a pin by right clicking on it and selecting save as pin.

Let us know if you need more...I bet there are some others who have pins out there who might share...

Greg

[williamtheis]

thanks for the quik reply!

just looking at your (and my) directory, the only one that really helps is the nature.txt which has 3 sky's:
Glencoe Sky, Inverness Sky, Brodie Sky
and a small dabble of leaves:
Irish Grass_lush, Irish Grass_sunny, Rhododendron Leaf (dark), Nasturtiom Leaf, Sycamore Leaf, and lastly Pittosporum Leaf   

does yours have more? or where can I find more? haven't seen any in the forum or at the curvemeister web site.

Bill

[curvemeister]

What sort of pins are you interested in, Bill?  Every once in a while I gather up various objects and measure them.  My activity in this area is driven by what people seem to want to use in their images.

[williamtheis]

I've been using the dark Rhododendron pin for pine forrests and then tweaking so dark pine leaves would be nice. Mostly these are Ponderosa Pine which have the same color most other pines these are Blue Spruce, they don't have the strong yellow component but rather tend to blue.  The dominant plant where I live (Mojave desert) is the Creosote which also is dark but there are many blue-green plants and grasses that don't grow in Ireland.  Also cottonwoods are much lighter leaves.  I could go on.  I know the pins don't have luminosity so they are not critical to match there but there are lots of different plants out there and if you were a botanist and did every one you would have millions of pins!  I'm not asking for that... just more of the common ones.  Likely you or users might have a number of these stashed away but I have seen no repository of them, other than the web page which pretty much has them all in the "Goodies" section already

by the way: I really love the new Curvemeister 3 interface, complete with worms!     Good job!

Bill

[curvemeister]

As it turns out I do have some samples of creosote bush wood.  I gathered it up in Utah because there was such a strong perception of blue wood I just had to take some with me.  I'll see about doing pins for it, as well as for some of the red sandstone from the same area.

In the meantime, there is nothing, BTW, stopping you from sharing RGB based pins with us that you take from your own images.  Although these do not have the "gravitas" of pins scanned with a spectrophotometer, they are about as useful.

[mdavis]

Personally, I have found two main uses for pins.  First, there are certain "known" colors that you can rely on in an image, but very very few unfortunately.  One is neutral gray, which is available by default in most digital editing programs.  The problem is finding a true neutral gray.  Cement is "usually" reliable, along with some un-colored objects like tires.  Even gray clothing can be tricky so be careful before you (as Dan Margulis says) "bet the image" color on your pin of one color.  One of my favorite sources of gray in many photos is to pin gray to a shaded white area as long as you know it isn't influenced by light reflected from a colored object.  You might also look for white clothing or paper.  Just be sure you know it is truly non-colored.

Second, you will build up a library of photos that you have color corrected.  In that library will be photos with known skin tones of known people.  You can create your own pins from these known, balanced skin tones.  Be careful here as well, as skin coloring can vary winter to summer.  The skin tone pins that come Curvemeister are great if all else fails.

Other than those two situations, I find that pinning is not very helpful unless you use a known color (fantastic idea using Lego blocks as a color reference) in your shots.  Landscape photography is often more interpretive, with sunrises, sunsets and odd sky colors at different angles, time of day and atmospheric conditions such as smoke or haze.  Although there are some sky color pins and foliage pins, using these can throw some really wierd color casts into your photos that you may not like.

[curvemeister]

I see three practical uses for pins.

My most common use of pins is for highlight, shadow, and neutral.  Second most common is skin tones.   Sky and foliage are other examples where establishing a credible color may improve the overall appearance of the image.

Another use of pins is to help with exact matches of corresponding colors in a series of images.  An example would be a set of portraits of the same person or family members.  In this case, the exact color match is not so important as is getting the skin tones reasonably close, so that no particular one stands out in a way that causes undue attention.

Logo or product shots where matching a specific color is another important use for pins.  In these cases, a specific Lab or Pantone color may exist, allowing a pin to be exactly defined, achieving a perfect match for the color.

Another use for pins is to provide a match to a known color standard, such as a MacBeth Color Checker.  This is particularly effective when the checker contains a patch that is similar to important colors in the image.  Pinning this particular patch can provide a good starting point for subsequent curving.  There are also paint chip pins for commonly available American paint products, allowing creation of an inexpensive color reference - many thanks to Clyde Davidson for developing this idea.  I would caution people that simply pinning all the patches is not a way to achieve instant accurate color - people who attempt to do so will find out quickly that color just doesn't work that way.

I believe that many people will find more than one of these applications of pins helpful in achieving better color.

[mdavis]

I agree with Mike here (I think we really said the same thing), however, I don't often use a pin for highlight or shadow, preferring to find a neutral if at all possible and let the highlight and shadows fall where they may.  I like to use the full screen curve window to judge where my high/low cutoff points are.  I find that if you can pin a neutral somewhere, the highlights and shadows take care of themselves, usually.  There are some circumstances where a highlight or shadow may be "off" when neutral is "on", but not often.

Skin tones are best if you "nail" a picture of a known person (family member for example) and then save that tone for future use.  The problem in using a skintone pin, however, is that you have to keep your subject out of the sun or tanning salons so the color doesn't change.  (Maybe have one for each season of the year?  )  A cheekbone may not have the same tone as an arm or neck or forehead, so be careful.  Skin pins would be most useful for balancing a single shooting session so all images are consistent for that session.

I would suggest being very careful with skies or foliage.  Sky color changes frequently with atmospheric pollution, sun position, season of the year, and lat/longitude position.  Foliage is good if you know the pin is the same species of plant or grass, but this, too, can change with moisture conditions, lighting, seasons.

The big question, as I mentioned elsewhere, is the Dan Margulis question of "are you willing to bet the image (overall color balance and accuracy) on a foliage or sky pin?  It depends on how accurate you must be in your "interpretation" of your shot.  Since we now have a tendency to slam the saturation sliders to the wall to give our images "punch", we are not often exhibiting accurate color, rather an interpretation of our images as we want the viewer to see them.  In that case, color pinning can be quick and easy.

In judging your images on a computer screen, I would caution you to make sure you have color-corrected your monitor, or rely on a reading of the color values in a known area of your image.

[Greg Groess]

I agree with Mike here (I think we really said the same thing), however, I don't often use a pin for highlight or shadow, preferring to find a neutral if at all possible and let the highlight and shadows fall where they may.  I like to use the full screen curve window to judge where my high/low cutoff points are.  I find that if you can pin a neutral somewhere, the highlights and shadows take care of themselves, usually.  There are some circumstances where a highlight or shadow may be "off" when neutral is "on", but not often.

I'd like to point out that you are not color correcting with highlight and shadow.  Rather to me they are "special" pins that set the level. Setting a highlight should not shift the color of your image.  It should set the upper limit of the pixel value for that image..same with shadow.

The big question, as I mentioned elsewhere, is the Dan Margulis question of "are you willing to bet the image (overall color balance and accuracy) on a foliage or sky pin?  It depends on how accurate you must be in your "interpretation" of your shot.  Since we now have a tendency to slam the saturation sliders to the wall to give our images "punch", we are not often exhibiting accurate color, rather an interpretation of our images as we want the viewer to see them.  In that case, color pinning can be quick and easy.

I would agree to a point about the "interpretation." I frequently download an image from the net just to see if I could "fix" it.  My interpretation of the image is just as valid as the original creator.  But in the end I accept that they made a judgement on how they wanted the image to "feel".

When it comes to this aspect of the CM process I preferr to use "Neutral Thresholding" I set the neutral where I think it should be and then after setting the highlight and shadows and maybe even tweaking the total curve some.  I'll grab that neutral with the mouse and move it around a bit to "make sure" I have a good choice.  I sometimes find a better choice and find the image to be better for the effort.  To me that is less "betting" on the image and more expolration of the possibilities within the image..."Betting the image" to me makes it sound like a one way street.  I think there are many great choices that are not necessarily "by the numbers"

A good monitor cal is always the starting point I would choose...

Greg

[derekfountain]

Skin tones are best if you "nail" a picture of a known person (family member for example) and then save that tone for future use.  The problem in using a skintone pin, however, is that you have to keep your subject out of the sun or tanning salons so the color doesn't change.  (Maybe have one for each season of the year?  )  A cheekbone may not have the same tone as an arm or neck or forehead, so be careful.  Skin pins would be most useful for balancing a single shooting session so all images are consistent for that session.

Surely a skin tone from a person changes from one image to another? A skin tone from a photo taken at sunset will surely be different from the tone of the same area of skin taken under different lighting conditions?

[Greg Groess]

I think we are assigning more to the pins than we should...they are a great resource to get an image back into an area where things look right.  But they cannot represent the be all and end all of skin colors or any colors for that matter. 

I see them more as guide posts along the way to get me closer to where I want to be faster. An example would be skin tones under florescent lighting. 

Skin tone can change from moment to moment...A runner before a race then after a race will have a vastly different skin tone.

Greg

[mdavis]

I'd like to point out that you are not color correcting with highlight and shadow.  Rather to me they are "special" pins that set the level. Setting a highlight should not shift the color of your image.  It should set the upper limit of the pixel value for that image..same with shadow.

Well, yes and no.  If you pin a highlight, it will force that to neutral 255,255,255 or a shadow to 0,0,0.  If you pick a highlight or shadow that isn't really a true highlight or shadow and has some color information in it, the pin will shift color of that area to a neutral (equal RGB values) which can affect your image.

Curvemeister has a much better way to set highlight and shadow by pulling in the ends of the histogram if you watch all the color channels so you don't clip one before the others.  This is one reason that Dan Margulis argues to use individual channels when setting highlight/shadow points.

[Greg Groess]

true enough...forgot about the color shifted highlights...and blue blacks...

[mdavis]

I guess it really depends on the image.  I shoot a lot of landscape stuff, some old barns, old cars, stuff like that.  Often, there really isn't a "good" highlight to be found unless you compress the histogram down to force one toward the top of the range.  Reflections don't work and can be dangerous since there is usually no information in them, just blown out light.  So for my work (and everyone's mileage may vary), I often find it very tough to find a true highlight, a true neutral.  I like to use shaded white if I can find it (snow fields in the mountains if they don't have that red algae in them), or a shirt collar on the down-lit side, a white painted building on the shady side, etc.  A neutral pin doesn't have to be 126,126,126, rather it can be anything that is neutral, light or dark.  Concrete is usually safe, rocks, especially in the mountains, can be very misleading and colorful, not just reddish.  Tires are good.

There is a very interesting and informative (and eye-opening) lesson in Dan Margulis' book "Professional Photoshop" in an earlier version (not the current 5th edition) of a man in a gray suit.  I haven't had time to work through the 5th Edition yet but I'm sure there is a replacement for that image in the latest edition as well.  The bottom line is that, if you put a marker on various locations where you "should" know what a reasonable color balance is, and you pin something that looks like the right pin but the color balance goes haywire (becomes unreasonable) elsewhere in the image, then you have guessed wrongly.

My experience is that, if you use pins, be very critical afterwards that the pin hasn't thrown the color balance off for the remainder of the image.  And of course, you have to decide if you want accurate colors, or impressive images that exploit saturation moves.

Thanks, Greg, for standing in while Mike is off flying around!