April showers bring May flowers, but what do May flowers bring? An article about color harmonies. Let's explore how color theory can help make these photos of spring flowers pop.
In this first example, we have a white flower that is pretty distinct (both in luminosity and chromacity) from the background. However, we can enhance this further with a triad color harmony; see the before and after color wheels below:
The green of the background, the yellow of the center of the flower, and (surprisingly) the slight purple tint of the white petals form this "after" triad. If you look at just the "before" photo above, it probably looks pretty good. But if you compare it to the "after" photo, you'll notice that there is actually a slight yellow tint to the white petals; we can correct this by adding purple using an instance of the colorize module and a mask to select only the white petals:
An interesting part of this is the use of the Lab color blend mode. This allows us to blend the color from colorize without altering the luminosity of the orginal image. This effect is subtle, but when compared with the original, the petals have a more pure white look and stand out better compared to their surroundings.
The other important adjustment on this image is the use of color equalizer to make other tweaks to specific colors, such as decreasing the saturation on the greens to de-emphaize them:
The net result of these changes is a more pleasing and balanced image.
Additional Examples
Let's take a look at some other photos using these same techniques:
Here is the before and after of the color wheel for this purple flower:
By shifting the foreground (the flower) and the background into complementary colors, we can further separate them from each other.
This image of yellow flowers uses a split complementary harmony to enhance contrast:
This helps the yellow flowers stand out from the greens. Moreover, it actually enhances the depth and contrast of the green parts of the plant as well.
Conclusion
I hope this was a helpful introduction to thinking about color harmonies and how they can be used to enhance images of beautiful flowers.