Have we become desensitised to colour?

I was prompted to think about this the other week when a client of ours had placed an order for an image from an old ilfochrome file. The file was scanned and prepared by us (CFL) a number of years back. Naturally, as the file was prepared for Ilfochrome and not Fuji flex, the file would require a colour profile to adjust the colour space to match the new printing material. I opened the old file and the colour just popped out at me, I mean it looked great. However I still needed to assign the profile and I knew that, while it would make the image accurate to what was previously printed on ilfochrome, from experience it would also significantly dull the image's colour (see example).

 I was intrigued by my reaction and I remember asking one of the other staff members which one they preferred and they also chose the un-profiled file over the correctly profiled file produced years back. What was strange and brought about this question "have we become desensitised to colour?" was this; The same people, maybe even myself, had worked on this image to make it look, at the time, natural and full of vibrant colour.

Now however, perhaps four years on, the same file looked bland and in need of some punch. What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences of when you have encountered this with your own work or in the work of others. Is it a good thing that we are evolving and looking to get more out of our images?

Leave us a comment

Josh

Comments  

Posted On

Aug 18, 2010

Posted By

0 RE: Have we become desensitised to colour?
I think we have to very careful with our use of the Saturation slider. It's way too common these days to see images which are a result of overzealous use of colour enhancement. Maybe this has caused some degree of colour desensitisation in us?

Quote

Refresh comments list
RSS feed for comments to this post.

Add comment

JComments