In the novel Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, there was a soldier that would always scream, “I see everything twice!” I don’t recall exactly why but maybe he was trying to make the doctors think he was crazy so he would get excused from combat.
This phase always comes to mind when I am color-correcting images on the computer. I use Adobe Bridge to color color and tonal balance digital negative files. I find that I have to look at every image at least twice to get it right.
I go through a first pass on all the images from a photoshoot and do all the adjustments to get it the way I think it should look. Then I put it away and do something else. Later I come back to the same folder of images. When I open the files in Bridge many of them are either too light or too dark or have a color cast. How does this happen?
I think what is going on is your eye gets adjusted to colors and brightness. So for instance if you are looking at pictures that are all too orange, after a while “too orange” starts looking normal. Then you make everything too orange. Later when your eye is back to neutral, you look at the pictures and it is obvious they are too orange.
Just like with music. You start adding cowbell to a song and pretty soon there is too-much cowbell but it sounds great to you. Until you listen later and realize you went overboard with the cowbell. What the heck were you thinking?
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