Capturing purple hued royal blue on camera

[steffib]

I am trying to photograph blurple colored costume pieces, and I just can't get the color to come out right. I tried flash, sunlight, shade, inside, outside, small camera, big digital SLR, and no matter what, the blues get all flattened out - blurple and turquoise all become more denim. There must be a trick - but what?!?!

[Kathiya]

i have this issue too. i've always been told that natural light helps show these colors better, but it hasn't always helped. i donno... i'd really like to know if there is a 'trick'

[JGilchrist]

Some colors just don't photograph and reproduce the same way your eye sees them in real life. Purple is one color that is notoriously difficult. Back in the days of film there was a special film you could get (name escapes me at the moment, Velvet or something like that) that was formulated specifically for purples.

You might try adjusting the color in Photoshop or some other image editor, however it will likely still look wrong on different monitors or when printed.

You could talk to someone at a professional print shop, they might be able to help. It would have to be a real print shop, not Kinkos or the Walmart photo department. You need someone who really knows color and is used to reproducing exact colors.

[shimmygoddess]

use the SLR and do a custom white balance......

[steffib]

Oh, you mean Velvia? Ahhh that takes me back, I used to love what it did for sunset/sunrise landscapes. Funny, I just talked about being into Velvia with somebody else today.

I asked my husband and he couldn't get this to work, even though he is no photo dummy, he has advanced color photography and studio lighting classes under his belt. His advice was to use Photoshop, even though he knows that I am not particularly gifted with it.

[Sersi3]

That is a common problem I've dealt with for years. I'm a professional videographer & editor. The problem is that particular color of bluish purple cannot be picked up correctly by most electronic sensors (including 3ccd & new canon sensor high end video cameras). It's not faulty equipment. I don't have a solution for you. Various white balancing doesn't help. If you are working with still shots, running it through photoshop would be your best bet.

[Kathiya]

electronic sensors...
would a good old film camera, rather than digital, capture these colors better?

[Sersi3]

yep, but then if you want to publish them to a web page you would run into the same problem. They would look good in your photo album.

[Kathiya]

yeah, i figured scanning them would be the same issue.
it's interesting! what's so particular about those colors that makes them so hard to capture electronically? is their wavelength just not quite captured? or is it something else?

[Sersi3]

Most cameras have a 3 chip receptor or an electronic sensor.
Basically The Violet Purple shows up blue because the red sensor does not see the red in the color strongly enough.
You could have problems with purpl-y pinks & fuschias. You could play with the settings of your camera to try to make it come out better but other colors would look skewed.

I did a quich search & came upon this explination. Film may not work after all.

"The reasons for your issue are several and quite complex, too. Firstly, the colour "purple" really is a mix of two extremes of the visible spectrum, viz. red and blue. It exists in our mind but not in a spectral sense. Secondly, all DSLRs have inherent problems with IR sensitity plus a spectral response which can be far from flat over the visible range, so the manufacturers put sophisticated IR-blocking and equalizing filters inside their cameras. And thirdly, your "purple" flower most likely reflects intensively in the near IR, and the flash outputs huge amounts of IR. All these factors contribute to what we perceive as inaccurate "purples". Earlier DSLRs tended to have too reddish purple tones (from the IR issue) and when you correct IR stronger, then the perceived balance of the purple turns too bluish instead. Alternatively, you can have a leakage of the red channel in the deep blue (again, IR is a culprit) so the Bayer matrix falsely registers red as blue.

And remember film could have even worse issues with purple/blue hues than digital. Shooting blue flowers in sunlight with Velvia was a nightmare in terms of inaccurate colour rendition, just to mention one example."

And check this out - Do You Believe in Purple?
Do You Believe In Purple?

[Kathiya]

that's so interesting!! thank you!

[Sersi3]

It's funny that I saw this today. I happen to currently (as I pause to type) be shooting gemstones that appear to change color in different types of light (incandescent & fluorescent). The ones I'm shooting today are a synthetic stone called Zandrite and these go from blue to purple. I geek out over this stuff ;)

[Kathiya]

hehe me too ^^
i have a violet lovebird and i've always wondered why it was exactly that the color didn't appear properly. it's well known among breeders that those colors don't appear well on photos. best chances are taking them outside, in natural light, and without flash, we all know that, but why???
i'd never thought about the fact that purple wasn't real. this is going to be my little geek-thing of the moment ^^

[HubicRuzz]

Hmm yeah I'd try just shooting it the best you can and using Photoshop to adjust the color.