Inspired by: GROSS.MAX _ Volume 2

GROSS.MAX’s artful manipulation of photographic hues and saturation levels is one of the most vibrant aspects of their representation style. For instance, in one black + white scene GROSS.MAX intensely colors the flowers of what looks to be a magnolia tree. The bright pink hue is so full that it appears to cast a rosy glow over the entire perspective.

What is the stratagem? Photo color manipulation.

Select a photo to work on and open it in Photoshop.

Step 1_Creating Layers

Open the photo and duplicate its layer four times. Now choose an element in the photo that you want to manipulate, it could be a key compositional element or an accent, anything. Trace this element with the Polygonal Lasso Tool and then copy it to another layer (control+c, control+j).

Step 2_Desaturate

In the Layers Window select the layer of photos that is closest to the top. Then go up to the toolbar on top and go to Image_Adjustments_Hue and Saturation. Or use the keystroke: control+U.

The menu offers three application: manipulate the hue, the saturation, and the lightness.

Now we are going to make this image black+white in order to explore hue and saturation effects.

Desaturate this layer by moving the Saturation slider all the way to the left. Note the layer of the object you cut out is on top of this, therefore it will retain its color.

Another way to make a color image black + white is in the top toolbar Image_Adjustments_Black and White. This option offers much more control over the shades and tints that make up the black + white image. Within the default black + white setting you can manipulate color filters which will give you warm or cool black + whites. There is also box labeled Tint which allows you to chose a color with which to tint the black + white image.

Step 3_Strategically Saturate

In the Hue + Saturation menu there is also a tinting option, it is the Colorize box. The Colorize setting casts a uniform hue over a desaturated image; so if you want your entire image to be red then you would pull the Saturation slider all the way to the left, desaturating the image, click the Colorize box, and then slide the Hue slider to the hue of your choice.

This is where a mild-mannered representation can get very Gaugin all of the sudden.

Now try to colorize the desaturated layer.

Here is an example where I’ve traced a tree and saturated it to contrast with the red landscape. The tree was isolated and copied in the same method used in the beginning of the tutorial.

Pure colorization might be too dramatic for your rendering, to compromise the effect you can adjust the Lightness slider in the Hue + Saturation menu, adjust the layer’s Opacity and/or apply Transparency Filters to the layer. GROSS.MAX does it best by colorizing accents in the representation, really capturing the eye.

Step 4_Refinement

One way to have color but some realism is to overlay a copy of the image on top of the rendering.

Select one of the untouched layers and move it above the colorized layer. Now adjust its opacity until it is transparent but also lending some other colors to the image.

Or to reference GROSS.MAX again, balance the amount of color with equal or more black + white.

Once again, these are the basic tools that can be used for process renderings or presentation drawings. It could be interesting to use this stratagem in conjunction with color theory. Maybe there is a color that persuades city officials  to fund large scale landscape architecture projects, ha. Well, let your imagination be your guide.

Thanks for reading!