R.G. Loc: Scotland

Can anybody help me to understand the colour brown? So far my understanding is that you can get reddish brown, orangey brown and yellowish brown.

At a stretch you can get muddy greens and muddy purples which could be loosely described as brown. In the case of muddy reddish purple it would probably be more accurately described as puce. I don't know if muddy green or yellow/green has a name. Muddy blues exist, but to my mind it would be too much of a stretch to call that brown.

When I worked with watercolour paints as a kid, my memory is that you can get brown by mixing either red, orange or yellow with black. If you do that in PP you just end up with dark red, orange and yellow ( :? ).

If I had to create brown from scratch in PP, I wouldn't have a clue where to start, and because I don't understand it I don't know how to manipulate it. Can somebody help me to get a handle on this damned elusive colour brown?

Violameister Loc: michigan

I just played with colors in Photoshop. Picking a color between yellow and red (a mix of yellow and red) and darkening it by adding black makes a pretty good brown. As the amount of black changes, slight changes in the red/yellow balance may be needed to keep the brown from getting too red or yellow.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

That would be orange then? Lightroom is my preferred editor, and I'm not sure how I would go about mixing colours :? .

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

I don't know Lightroom, but for basic background understanding, here is an interesting tutorial on how to make brown in painting:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Brown-from-Primary-Colors

"To make brown, you will have to use two of the primary colors to create a secondary color and mix it with its complimentary primary color."

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Thank you Linda, and thanks for the link.

I seem to remember that when you're dealing with lighting (i.e. sources of illumination) and video, the primary colours (red, blue, green) are different from the primary colours of paint (red, blue, yellow). I'm hoping that it's simply a case of mixing complementary colours and getting the brightness right.

Hopefully, in Lightroom, you should be able to add one colour (say, orange) from the colour tool that's part of the Adjustments brush, then add a second colour (say, blue) using a WB shift via the Adjustments brush again (might need a second application as opposed to doing it all at once). Presumably another possibility is to provide a second colour (the complement of the starting colour) using the Tint slider via the Adjustments brush.

This is new territory for me, so I'll have to experiment. I'm hoping that the only difference between mixing two complementary colours and mixing all three primary colours is the amount of control that you have over the final colour. In video, when you mix all three primaries, you should get white or something close, so I don't know how the methods for paint translate into PP.

I guess I'll just have to start experimenting. Hopefully I'll get a few more pointers before I start.

R.G. Loc: Scotland

These are some very preliminary results using the colour tool in the Adjustments brush, mixed with WB and Tint adjustments. They each took just one implementation of the Adjustments brush.

The R,O,Y and B stand for red, orange, yellow and blue, which were the main colours painted with the Adjustments brush.

I tried green but I couldn't get anything even remotely resembling a believable brown. Orange seemed to give the best starting point and gave the most easily controlled brown when it came to using the WB and Tint sliders to shift the tint of the brown.

-

Armadillo Loc: Ventura, CA

RG,

Try this link for color values, if LR color pallet will alow for manually inserting specific colo values you cna mis ny shade you need.

The chart includes a sample of the color along with its Hex value for web pages, and RGB values for graphics applications.

http://cloford.com/resources/colours/namedcol.htm

Michael G

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Thanks for the link, Michael. That's quite a comprehensive list.

I couldn't find a way to numerically generate a colour in Lightroom, but I can remember that's how I used to generate my desktop colour before images became my preferred background, so I'm familiar with the process. I've taken a note of some of them (sienna, saddle brown and just brown). I have PSE but never had to generate colours so I don't know if it's capable or not.

Uuglypher Loc: South Dakota (East River)

From the perspective of one who makes browns of different sorts with colored pencils, water colors, and acrylics it depend on whether your heart's desire is a raw umber, burnt umber, russet, sable, or any of the other, more arguable sorts of "brown", including those of scatological derivation. I can only agree with your approach of darkening reds, oranges and the great spread of yellows( lemon to ochre) with black...and with a touch, dab, tip, or scosh of the complementaries.

I'm delighted to have been of such undeniably astute assistance!

Your colonial Coz'

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Hi, New World Coz. Thanks for your undeniably acute assistance :D . I think one of the problems is that what works for paints doesn't translate directly to PP, for the same reasons that it doesn't translate directly to lighting and video.

In PP, lighting and video, if you mix all three primaries (R,G,B) in equal amounts you should end up with a shade of grey (all the way up to pure white depending on the luminosity level). If you do that with paint you end up with a colour that defies description, whether you take the primaries to be red, green, blue or red, yellow, blue.

I think your astute summary that it's either red, orange or yellow, darkened and with a scosh of the complementary colour probably holds true in PP as much as any other approach.

PS - as a unit of measurement I prefer the smidgen to the scosh for use in post processing (I know, I know - it's a matter of personal preference :-) ).

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

You do need to try this to get the colour you need...
I'll pick on some obvious colour and blend them: blue + yellow = green, right?
Open up the colour picker, and select a blue you like, mine came out as R10 - G110 - B20.
Now pick a nice yellow, like R250 - G240 - B60.
Now add each two numbers and divide this sum by 2:
R = 10 + 250 = 260 : 2 = 130
G = 110 + 240 = 350 : 2 = 175

You want a nice orange? (Well, I think it's nice!)
Red + Yellow make orange:
250 - 30 - 30 =Red
250 - 250 - 80 = Yellow
(250 + 250) : 2 = 250
(30 + 250) : 2 = 140
(30 + 80) : 2 = 55 and there's your orange.
B = 20 + 60 = 80 : 2 = 40 : There's your green.

You can do the same thing for 3 colours, just and and divide by three.

(PS - you can use the hexadecimal colour in programs other than PS and PSE, but in these two programs I'd still use the RGB to "make" new colours).

(2PS - I don't know if LightRoom even has a colour picker, but the above can definitely be done in Photoshop Elements (which I use) and in Photoshop).

R.G. Loc: Scotland

Thanks for the extra info, Morning Star. The colour tool in the Adjustments brush in LR is a bit basic and doesn't give you any data about the colour that you've selected. But I do have PSE, so the next time I have it up and running I'll have a play with the colour picker.