More often than not, I want the colors in my photos to look like they did in real life. Ok, sometimes I want them to look better than real life. But even then, I want the colors to be realistic.

If you’re beauty blogging, food blogging, or selling products online, you want your photos to look true to life too. Your audience deserves an accurate representation, right? Food doesn’t often look appetizing when the colors are off. (Imagine green tinted meat loaf…yuk!) And how could your readers take your eyeshadow recommendation if your swatches didn’t look like the real thing? Just imagine how you would feel if that gorgeous purple shirt you ordered online arrived at your house an awful shade of blue.

Bottom line is, color is important. Knowing how color can go wrong will help you get it right.

The cause of problems:

Two of the most common problems I see in color digital photography are incorrect white balance, and poor (or no) color management. Both are easy to understand and easier to fix.

White balance in a Nutshell

Digital photos are made up of just a few basic colors mixed together in different ways. Different kinds of light require a different mix of those colors to make the photo look real. That’s why digital cameras often have options for light sources including Sun, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, and Fluorescent, and sometimes others. Choosing one of these options lets your camera know how it should mix the basic colors to make your photos look their best. Choosing Automatic mode lets your camera decide what kind of light you’re in and what it should be doing with colors. When the wrong mix of colors is used, photos can end up too yellow, blue, green and even pink.

If your camera gets it wrong, don’t sweat it. White balance is often easy to fix. If you start shooting in RAW it will always be easy to fix. (Unlike JPEGs which lock in your camera’s white balance decisions, RAW files can be changed after you take the picture. Pretty cool.) I have an article on correcting the white balance of your photos whether you take JPEGs or RAW. See, wasn’t that easy?

Next up is Color Management.

No, this won’t require a business degree. Or any degree. Here’s color management in a nutshell.

Different devices like cameras, computers, monitors, and printers read and produce colors in very different ways. In order to get the thing you saw with your eyes to go from camera to computer to print (or the web) and still look the same, there has to be some translation along the way. Color management gives you that translation. Now here’s the trick. There are different color spaces» to choose from. Some are big, they can use a whole lot of colors, like the big 64 box of crayons and some are smaller like the 12 crayon box. And there’s not a “right one”. But there are better and worse ways to use the different options. Here’s a couple of options.

If you’re just starting out and you want to keep things really simple, use a color space called sRGB. It’s a smaller color space (like the 12 pack of crayons) but it can still produce very nice and accurate looking pictures. It’s the easiest way to go since nearly every device will be able to produce the colors in this color space. Since every device will be on the same page your picture will look the same no matter where you look at it. And you won’t have to do special correction or adjustments when you move between devices, like going from your desktop to the web.

If your camera has the option, choose sRGB as the color space. If you don’t have the option to choose, your camera is probably using sRGB anyway. If you use GIMP  the default color space is sRGB (scroll down to point 1.2.1 Input). Now you’re all set.

The other option is to use a big color space (more like the 64 pack of crayons) in your camera and then make adjustments as you go. The idea is that if your original file has lots of colors you’ll have more information to use and more options to choose from. Not a bad idea, but it can get tricky. You’ll have to convert and adjust your photos as you transfer them to different devices.

For example: Internet browsers generally use sRGB. When you switch from the big color space to a smaller color space colors often get lost in the translation. Imagine the crayons. To switch from the big 64 pack of crayons to the 12 pack, internet browsers will just use the closest crayon available. But sometimes the closest crayon isn’t the most accurate looking color. Sometimes a mix of two or three colors is a better match. Sometimes adding some contrast or other adjustments makes the photo look more like the original too. Straight conversion from a big color space to a small color space is rarely exact so you’ll have to make those extra adjustments yourself to avoid losing quality.

And you have to remember to change your color space every time too. Otherwise your photos may end up looking dull and lifeless.

If you’re interested in this option, choose either Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB from your camera’s menu.  If you don’t have the option check your camera’s documentation. It may tell you what color space the camera uses by default (though it’s most likely sRGB). You can even set up GIMP to use one of these larger color spaces so all of your devices are on the same page.

More details on color to come. Next up is color in composition. Stay Tuned!