Explore The Emotional Possibilities Of 3 Different Tonal Keys In Images

Color - Adjustment  Comment
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Want more mood in your photographs? One way to do this is to limit images to a single tonal range and focus more on the emotional associations it offers.

Luminosity is often divided into three broad ranges; shadows, midtones, and highlights. If the tonalities in images are predominantly from one of these ranges, they are often described as low-key or high-key. (Curiously, the words medium or mid-key are less frequently used, but it is useful to make this distinction.) By constraining an image to one of these three, you can set a specific mood.

High keys are light and airy.

Medium keys are moderate and balanced.

Low-key images are dark and heavy.

Pursue this a little further by listing as many specific emotions that you feel are related to each of these, and you’ll get a sense of how many shades of expression you’ll be able to explore when you identify them. Read More

6 Ways To Get Better Shadow & Highlight Detail In Your Photographs

Technique - Color  Comment
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You want your photographs to glow - right? So what’s better than one kind of glow? How about three?

You can get there by not succumbing to the classic temptations to clip shadows and/or highlights to produce a more obviously dramatic but a less lively, nuanced, and expressive tonal scale. Instead, hold the full dynamic range with a real black and white and also create gorgeous separation in the values nearest to them.

So many times we give the lion’s share of the contrast to the midtones. Midtone contrast is really important. But that doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice the light in highlights by making them too hot to look at comfortably or in shadows making them so dark they turn to murky mud. You can hold separation in these extreme ends of the tonal scale and produce beautiful qualities of light that complement not just contrast. Here’s how.


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