Filtered for your viewing pleasure

In lieu of keeping up with the Pioneer Woman's blog, I've enjoyed many photography tutorials (cropping, aperture, etc) and I've been inspired to blog a little tutorial of my own. Something that I just learned about- colored filters on black and white pictures. I was originally trying to find the option on my camera that filtered out all color except a chosen color. I thought I found it but when I set my camera, I was getting black and white with no color accent. Turns out my camera doesn't have that feature (which lead me to explore the options on Adobe Photoshop and Corel Paintshop Pro) and I was just picking a colored filter for a black and white exposure. I did a little research and here's what I found...

Based on this guy- the color wheel- the color that you choose is basically like you're looking through "that color" sunglasses at a photo.. I know- it sounds totally common sense and you all already knew this. But it's new to me and maybe... just maybe someone out there is learning this filter concept for the first time too.

--cricket, cricket--

So back to my sunglasses. There you are with RED tinted sunglasses on looking at someones face. Everything that is in the red family (lips, rosy cheeks, blemishes, bloodshot eyes) will tend to fade or appear lighter and everything that is opposite red on the color wheel will pop! Same is true if you put on your blue tinted sunglasses. The blues will lighten while the reds/oranges/yellows will stand out more.

Let's take a look and see if we can see a difference.

Straight out of the Camera (SOOC)

Red Filter- Look at the detail in the water! There are a trillion ripples! It also darkened the whole picture since most of the picture is blue and the red filter contrasts with that.

Blue Filter- Wow- look at the difference between the blue filter and the red filter! It's a much lighter picture. The white on John's shorts really looks white where on the red filter, it got much darker. The water looses some detail and looks a bit smoother.

SOOC

Green Filter- I feel like there isn't much contrast here. The sky is unremarkable and the picture looks alright but nothing special. It is said that the green comes to life with a green filter. Maybe I picked the wrong picture but I don't see it.
Red Filter- look at the drama in the sky.. I didn't even know there was anything but a clear blue sky in the original.. hmm. I feel like the detail in the leaves (especially in the foreground in the bottom left) has come out a little. Biggest difference for me is still the sky though.
SOOC

Yellow- this has just a subtle change and looks pretty true to the SOOC shot.

Red: All his skin tones are lightened up and the rosy cheeks have been tamed down quite a bit. His hand is quite apparent and really stands out. The blankets are pretty contrasty.
Orange- Pretty neutral. Creamy and fair skin tones. An orange filter is said to be good for portraits because it can slightly reduce the appearance of blemishes and freckles.
Green- Holy cow. Who put lipstick on my boy???
Blue- Apparently Riley has been out in the sun too much- he's got a tan! His hand almost disappears into it's surroundings.

Well, there you have it. Did you learn anything about filters? I sure did and I just wanted to share. Play with your pictures and see what kind of effect you get and how it changes with the filter colors!