When I travel, I'm fascinated by colors that are unique to certain places: for example, Iceland has its own set of greens that I’ve never seen anywhere else, and Patagonia has its own blues. I see those unique colors in some of my photos and want to highlight how special they are. That’s the motivation behind the “Colors” project—I draw out specific colors from my photographs and superimpose that custom color palette on the original photo.
As you'll see in the video below, I use Adobe Color CC to extract exact colors. (You could also use the Adobe Color Themes panel in Adobe Photoshop CC or Adobe Capture CC if you’re on a mobile device.)
Click the image above to watch my short video how-to (no sound).
Here are my steps:
- Finish coloring/editing an image in Adobe Lightroom CC.
- Export file from Lightroom to my desktop and Import the file into Adobe Color.
- Select colors I want to highlight and save the color theme.
- Screenshot the palette to the Desktop.
- Open the photo in Photoshop and drag the color palette screenshot to create a new layer.
- Center and add a white border to the palette.
- Save to automatically open the image in Lightroom.
I think it's amazing that with today’s technology, we don't have to mine lapis stones in Afghanistan to achieve a certain blue, or seek out predatory ocean sea snails to extract precise purple hues.
To see more of Andrew Ling’s work, follow him on Instagram, or check out his Adobe Stock portfolio.
August 14, 2018
