Why is Landscape Processing Often this Hue

[ckcarr]

I have been pondering this a long time, so my question is why do many of the landscape photographers I see, those that are actually very good repeatedly use that same purplish/magenta tone in their photographs. You have Marc Adamus, a few people on FM, and others sometimes in Outdoor Photographer. It's not a natural coloring, but I see it all the time. Why not natural proper color? IMO that dark coloring is rather sinister and depressing...

Just curious.

 

[AlanLichty]

No clue - if anything I tend to lean more towards a warmer tone in my processing. Probably as a reaction to all the magenta/purple I see

 

[Ben Egbert]

This is an excellent question. I may be guilty of it myself, but would not know for sure as my color judgement is not so great. I can do very well on a color test which basically just shows how well I can differentiate between two adjacent colors. But the entire spectrum is shifted because I have a built in yellow filter called a cataract.


I have learned all sorts of trick about measuring WB and colors, and apply them numerically, but when your eyes have a built in color cast, it's always more difficult.

There is also a lifetime of experience with films like Kodachrome or the various movie films that were probably also over saturated.

I wonder how others deal with this?

 

[ckcarr]

It has nothing to do with your vision Ben.
It's a deliberate processing decision on their part.
Maybe it works for them.

However, it seems it also then becomes a lemming move, where Marc started it, and then all the others start copying it.

 

[AlanLichty]

You have just given me a good reason to grab the temp slider bar and push it to the right now but I have always been somewhat of a contrary anyway.

For the record I am not a fan of having abnormal color tones in landscape photography.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Hey Craig, I guess my point is that I am never sure about color, and I have had many color cast critiques over the years. this is a case of you don't know what you don't know. I guess I was not aware of this hue issue you mentioned either.

Since raw is so flat, and you have to jazz them up some, it's hard to tell when you have gone to far. I am pretty sure I lean toward warmer than natural so I probably don't get that hue you are speaking of, but I sure hope you folks let me know when I am off the reservation.

 

[JimFox]

Something to think about...

With the WB adjustment, when adjusting the Tint, it's either adjusting to the Green or adjusting to the Magenta...

I know when I adjust the WB, leaning towards Magenta seems to be more pleasing then leaning towards the Green.

Back to Craig's point, for sure there does seem to a segment of photographers who lean to having too adding more magenta in a photo then what would have been in a scene naturally. I have noticed it mostly with early or late light, or with night shots.

I know I lean towards adding a bit of magenta as I process, sometimes I have overdone it for my personal tastes, and then had to go back and rework an image because I didn't care for the final processed shot. But for anyone who processes their own images, the moment any WB adjustments are made, there are choices then also having to be made about the Tint.

 

[Jeffrey]

In the case of Adamus, and many like him, they often shoot in low light conditions early or late with no light in the 'Daylight' temp range. So, the images are cooler in general which is somewhat accurate. I could be totally wrong.

 

[Linda Combs]

I thought I was the only person who thought too many photos today are too purple or magenta. I would like more natural looking photographs.

 

[AlanLichty]

As I was wading through some sunset shots last night I may have stumbled across the answer to Craig's question. I was using Singh Ray ND graduated filters for skies vs. the beach and for almost every shot I took using the ND grads there is a purplish tone to the sky colors. I did take a few shots without the filters and they had color balance that matched what I was seeing on the beach. For the record the sunset images I posted last night and the evening before both needed color temp adjustments to get them back to reality. The shots as posted have too much magenta.

The Singh Ray filters are supposed to be color neutral but that is not what I am seeing for results - all of the ND grad shots read around 3900 for color temp with tint at -5 or so in Lightroom whereas the direct images were closer to 5000 for temp and -24 on the tint. These were low light condition shooting conditions as you might suspect. When I used the color temp/tint numbers from the direct images the colors were more accurate.