How To Use Simultaneous Contrast To Make Colors Even More Lively

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Composed of two complementary color families (yellow and blue); one is light and the other dark, while one is warm and the other is cool. Together, they increase each other's intensity.

Simultaneous Contrast

You can make a color appear more lively by changing it or by changing the colors around it. Even though it remains unchanged, we see it differently. Color context can be almost as important as individual color.

These effects are part physics (measurable qualities of light), part biology (what our brains do to enhance information to better perceive the world), and part psychology (our subjective responses). While the phenomena and our responses to them are complex, we can use a few simple dynamics to produce striking effects.

The colors in the center are the same but appear different because of the colors that surround them.

A lighter surround makes a color appear darker - and vice versa.

A warmer surround makes a color appear cooler - and vice versa.

A saturated surround makes a color appear more neutral - and vice versa.

Find more on Simultaneous Contrast and Color Theory here.

3 Types Of Contrast

Luminosity, hue, and saturation, the three elements of color, offer three types of contrast to choose from.

Changes in luminosity make colors feel lighter or heavier.
Use Curves. How To Master Color Adjustment With Curves

Changes in hue bring warm and cool associations with them.
Use Curves. 4 Ways To Enhance Color Temperature In Your Images

Changes in saturation increase or decrease vibrance.
Use Saturation and/or Vibrance. How To Master Saturation In Your Images

All three, either individually or collectively, can make a color appear nearer or farther away.

Atmospheric perspective enhances the illusion of depth; lighter, warmer, more saturated colors appear closer.

Sometimes, you want to select the element you change carefully to create a specific effect.

Other times, you just want separation, and any kind of contrast will do. For maximum effect, change all three elements as much as you can while still maintaining a realistic appearance.

Nearby, Adjacent, Surrounding


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33 Great Quotes On The Color Green

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Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color green.

Which is your favorite? Have one to add? Leave a comment!

 

“Green is the prime color of the world and that from which its loveliness arises.”
– Pedro Calderon de la Barca

“It seems very safe to me to be surrounded by green growing things and water.”
– Barbara Kingsolver

"It's been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don't suppose anybody really understands yet."
- Jane Goodall

"Nature in her green, tranquil woods heals and soothes all afflictions."
– John Muir

“Absolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men, this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious. ”
– Wassily Kandinsky

“Green is the fresh emblem of well-founded hopes. In blue the spirit can wander, but in green, it can rest.”
– Mary Webb

"Even in winter, it shall be green in my heart."
– Frederic Chopin

“Keep a green tree in your heart and perhaps the singing bird will come.”
– Lois Lowry

“No one thinks of winter when the grass is green.”
— Rudyard Kipling

"Green strongly influences the heart and helps alleviate tension. Positive qualities associated with green are generosity, humility, and cooperation."
– Tae Yun Kim

"The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh."
- Rumi

“Remember, green’s your color. You are spring.”
– Gwendolyn Brooks

"For still there are so many things that I have never seen: in every wood in every spring there is a different green."
– J. R. R. Tolkien

"For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver."
– Martin Luther

"Ultimately, the only wealth that can sustain any community, economy or nation is derived from the photosynthetic process - green plants growing on regenerating soil."
- Allan Savory

"By the way, most of the light that comes from the sun is green."
– Bill Nye

"No water, no life. No blue, no green."
– Sylvia Earle

“Green is a process, not a status. We need to think of ‘green’ as a verb, not an adjective.” – Daniel Goleman


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3 Qualities Of Light You Can Use To Make Your Images Glow

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Color has three elements – luminosity, hue, and saturation. 

Luminosity describes a color’s lightness.

Hue describes a color’s temperature. (It’s the rainbow ROYGBIV.)

Saturation describes a color’s degree of neutrality.

All colors can be described as a combination of these three values.

Each of these elements offers a unique quality and type of contrast. (Think energy.)

While we see all three elements simultaneously, learning to distinguish these three elements from one another is a useful skill that will help you see more clearly and see more possibilities for enhancing your images.

Consider the transformations each element of color offers.

When highlights are lightened with luminosity, this image feels cooler and more brilliant.

When highlights are warmed with hue, the image feels hotter and more humid.

When highlights are intensified with saturation, the image feels more lush and fertile.

Each of these elements of color implies a different atmosphere, a different time of day, or perhaps even season, and, in this case, a state of plant growth. Color becomes a code for many different qualities, and so can offer you many possibilities for creative enhancement and personal expression.

The following examples will illuminate some of the possibilities and pitfalls for you.

 


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19 Great Quotes About The Color Red

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Enjoy this collection of quotes on the color red.

"The ‘pure’ red of which certain abstractionists speak does not exist. Any red is rooted in blood, glass, wine, hunters’ caps, and a thousand other concrete phenomena. Otherwise, we would have no feeling toward red and its relations…"
– Robert Motherwell

"If one says ‘Red’ – the name of color – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different."
– Josef Albers

"I will never know how you see red, and you will never know how I see it."
- Anne Carson

"All my life I've pursued the perfect red. I can never get painters to mix it for me. It's exactly as if I'd said, "I want Rococo with a spot of Gothic in it and a bit of Buddhist temple" - they have no idea what I'm talking about."
– Diana Vreeland

"I want a red to be sonorous, to sound like a bell. If it doesn't turn out that way, I add more reds and other colors until I get it."
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir

"Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion because it's on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you've got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger, and frustration."
– Taylor Swift

If I decide to make a coat red in the show, it’s not just red, I think: is it communist red? Is it cherry cordial? Is it ruby red? Or is it apple red? Or the big red balloon red?
– Lady Gaga

"Bright reds - scarlet, pillar-box red, crimson or cherry - are very cheerful and youthful. There is certainly a red for everyone."
- Christian Dior


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The Only Way to Steal Photoshop Color Grading That Works 100% Of The Time

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“Easily copy color grading styles using ‘Common Sense’ in Photoshop! Learn how to logically approach color matching using several techniques and create your own steps that get the best results based on your image and what you wish to achieve.”

How To Keep One Color in Photoshop – No Masks Needed!

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“In this video, you will learn an easy trick to make an image black and white and keep one color.”
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The Easiest Way To Match Colors Exactly With Photoshop

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“Learn how to copy colors from one image to another in Photoshop. Colin Smith shows you how to change the color of an object to perfectly match the color of another object in a picture in Photoshop.”
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The Most Natural Way to Increase Saturation and Enhance Color in Photoshop

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“Make the Colors Pop Naturally in Seconds! Using a Selective Color adjustment layer in Photoshop, increase saturation without any color banding or the colors clipping.”
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How To Add Color To Highlights With Curves In Photoshop

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“How to add colored reflections and catchlights in Photoshop. Colin Smith shows you how to switch curves into colored mode to create the most powerful colors and add then to the highlights in an image. Using curves this way opens a world of possibilities in Photoshop.”
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