What Color is Water? Color correction fun

[Swampy]

Marthig,

Water is such an "ethereal" thing. I've heard that animators find it one of the most difficult things to render and the techniques are getting better with high powered computer animation. I once had an artist say, "Water is always in a fluid state."

I'm not trying to draw it or animate it, but just colorize it in the two deminsional world and it's fun to see different takes on the same subject.

It would be interesting to see how one of the "painterly pros" might render this in a water color or chalk and attempt to keep the feeling of power and force displayed in that big rooster tail spray. LeRoy Neiman de javu? :-O

[Cassidy]

Colorized based on my eye pref and then levels adjustment

[Photo678]

ehhhhhhhhh

[creeduk]

Tricky to get realism but then a desireable look did a few and this was the one that just felt right.

[Panpan]

The answer is in three parts.

First, water has an intrinsic pale blue color. The color is weak so there needs to be a lot of water. Lakes and deep holes in snow and glaciers are examples. Water is sometimes other colors because of suspensions in it; algae for example can make it greenish.

Second, areas of water seen at shallow angles tend to be the color of the sky because of reflections.

Third, turbulence from mixing air looks white, for example waves or rapids.

Pierre

[Gary Richardson]

Don't know what colour water is, as it is so often a reflection of its surroundings.

But liked the pic, so had a play with it.

Extracted skier from BG.
Inserted colour blend layer with radial gradient blue-green/blue. Blurred further using Gauss Blur, set opacity to about 25%.

Applied levels to BG to spark it up a touch.

[Swampy]

Very nice, Gary. The opacity setting and radial gradient really helps keep the photo from looking like it has a color cast.

[philbach]

In the picture I posted, I used a gradient map adjustment layer after selecting and moving the skier to a higher layer. I used about four colors with white for the brightest, green for the mid tones and blue for the darker colors. The result was so so but I feel the technique is ideal for this sort of a situation.

[Swampy]

Phil, I find your water color in the top of the rooster tail distracting to my eye. Since the water is less dense as it sprays out from the base of the wave, there should be less color at the top. Just my opinion.

[creeduk]

with mine I tweaked and tweaked the color then I duplcated the image and changed mode to screen to highlight the water plume, used a gradient and some hand masking to remove any color from the that area as well.

[philbach]

Swampy your right. I din't spend much time worrying about the end result in this doodle section. The background around the plume was dark so the gradient mask tended to add more color to it and the result was not natural.

I just used the photo to run a gradient mask since I don't use it often. Edgework uses them to colorize skin and I thought I would give it a shot in this photo.

[Gary Richardson]

Thanks Swampy, glad you liked it.

Didn't have too much time, so kept it simple, but I was quite pleased with the effect. The added Gaussian Blur on the gradient layer softened things a little as well as the reduced opacity, it's a trick I often use when colouring things. Doesn't always work, but looks reasonably natural when it does.

[Kraellin]

nancyj,

never heard that before, that water is actually a tiny bit blue.

thought i'd give this one a shot also.

Craig

[CJ Swartz]

Originally Posted by Kraellin

...thought i'd give this one a shot also.

Craig

I can see now why he's making that sharp turn!

[Swampy]

LOL Craig!!

Love it. A Gator would be appropriate around here, but I don't think my customer , the Chamber of Commerce, would appreciate it.

Still laughing...