Jay P. Morgan, from the Slanted Lens, shares his tips on how he created a colorful, Mondriaan-Inspired product shoot with Nike shoes. Careful layout planning – especially when it comes to backdrops – is essential, notes Morgan, for getting the best results. Watch as he demonstrates how he used Datacolor’s ColorReader EZ, Spyder Checkr and simple tracing paper (in lieu of a softbox!) to create a stunning backdrop that brilliantly showcased Nike’s latest shoe offerings with soft, beautiful highlights focused on the products.

A good food photo makes your mouth water, awakens the desire to cook the same dish, and inspires the photographer in us to also take such a great food shot. But perfect food styling is not always easy. Luckily, there are tools like ColorReader EZ that can help with the color selection and color palette inspiration for the photo shoot.

Perfect food styling of a pumpkin soup.

When food photographer Heike Herden wants to present a new recipe on her blog or stage food and products for a client, colors play a very important role. She loves to be inspired by the color of the food she’s creating. Depending on the recipe, season and mood, her color palettes can range from harmonious monochromatic hues to schemes with intense color contrasts.

To find the perfect color scheme, she likes to use the ColorReader EZ with its many creativity-inspiring functions – something she demonstrates to us using the example of an easy-to-make pumpkin soup.

Pumpkin soup with smoked salmon and parsley –
an image that makes your mouth water!

Heike wants to stage the pumpkin soup in a visually creative way and uses the ColorReader EZ for her color inspiration on set. To do this, she first measures the color of the pumpkin skin as the base color, because the finished soup should dominate the picture with its paler orange color and stand out. Since the soup will end up being more like the color of the pumpkin flesh, she also scans this and chooses it for her baseline color.

Having set the perfect orange color as her starting point, she uses the feature “Coordinate Colors” in the ColorReader app for coordinating color ideas and creates different color palettes that work well with the base shade and that she likes. Her favorite palette includes pink and green, so she decides to add smoked salmon and parsley to her soup for added color.
She also selects the green background based on the color palette and adds other accessories that correspond to the suggestions of the various color palettes: beige plates, pampas grass and a piece of natural fabric. Heike places all of this on the green background to see if she really likes the color scheme – and then arranges everything the way she wants to photograph it.

Heike shows the process of her food styling in the studio and explains how the ColorReader EZ is being used in this video:

Heike Herden is a freelance photographer and author from Cologne, Germany, who specializes in food photography. Since she is also a foodie who loves to cook and bake, she has her own food blog, too. Her recipes and appetizing food photos make your mouth water and inspire readers to try her recipes as well as photograph their own culinary creations.

I’m often commissioned to do product photography – usually, the typical ones with a white background – but on other occasions, within a more styled setting.

When these kind of jobs come up, if there’s no budget for a stylist, you have to style the setting yourself. That’s when the Datacolor ColorReader EZ comes in handy.

Let me give you an example. I was commissioned to take some product shots of a package of coffee beans. I had total creative freedom for the shoot, so I decided to create a small still-life.

It was important that the coffee looked good, but it was just as important that the colors in the setting be coordinated. I decided to scan some of the colors on the coffee packaging with ColorReader EZ to find color matches and coordinating colors:

Share Color Palettes

With the ColorReader app, I was able to create a palette of colors to have at hand for reference, and to easily share. You can click the link below to see the sample colors:

https://colorreader-fm.datacolor.com/palette/pbN1z63y/

If you click on the link, you’ll see that there are 4 colors – the 3 you see in the reference image above and a fourth one which is the measurement made on the coffee beans that I wanted to include in the picture.

Once you scan and select a color with the ColorReader EZ device, the ColorReader app shows you a variety of coordinating color options. The app shows you color matches to Savage Universal backgrounds, which I use frequently, along with RAL and NCS colors.

Finding the right colors for the setting

I work with RAL or NCS to find the best color match, which lets me look for a matching paint color (for example from the Titanlux brand) for use with props or backdrops.

On the left we can see the complementary color palette based on the color measurement of one of the coffee beans. On the right, is a Triad color paletted offering (colours that are equally distant from each other on the color wheel).

I decided to use the brown colour (top left corner) as a background hue, and looked for some coffee cups in a colors found on the front of the coffee packaging to add some additional color to the photo composition:

For the background paint, I went to a local hardware store with the RAL and NCS color references and got the precise paint color match right away:

So I could create my own little still-life…

With everything assembled and, of course, with the help of a SpyderCheckr24 color chart to ensure I was showing the real colors as accurate as possible, I could start to take the shot.

I edited the final photo, taking the colors from the SpyderCheckr24 to create the right HSL-preset, and finally added some steam to the coffee to give it that warmer touch.

Undoubtedly, the Datacolor ColorReader EZ is a great tool to help find the colors that best match and coordinate with the settings you create. Now I always take it with me when I’m taking a product, fashion or interior design shot.

Author: Guillem Calatrava.

Professional photographer and creator of audio-visual content and design. Co-founder of Naturpixel, featuring online photography courses, along with articles on different aspects of photography.

Photo Credits: Vera Wohlleben / www.nicestthings.com

Vera Wohlleben is a German blogger, photographer and stylist for food and stills. She has a passion for developing food recipes and loves food photography. Having studied medicine, she decided to change her career path in 2011 and started her own blog, which gives her the opportunity to live and breathe her creativity, her feel for colors, symmetry and composition. Some of the top German food brands are amongst her customers.

Vera‘s blog www.nicestthings.com focuses on the beautiful things in life: sweet and savory recipes, interior design ideas and inspiration for any living space, as well as travelling stories. Her blog is an inspiring hybrid between food, interior design and lifestyle.

Life is colorful – from the environments that surround us, both natural and constructed, to the everyday moments and milestones that fill our days. We created ColorReader EZ for practical reasons – like simplifying the paint color decision process with an easy-to-use, portable, Bluetooth-enabled device that measures any color you like and provides you with the top 3 paint color matches in an instant, saving you time, money and re-painting hassles. But it also lets you celebrate the colorful moments of your life by surrounding yourself with the hues you love in the spaces you live in – more important than ever now that we’re all spending more time at home. Enjoy our latest quick video which celebrates the colorful moments of life and the ease in which you can invite these hues into your home to savor with ColorReader EZ.

Color-coordinating your photo shoot has never been easier with ColorReader EZ and Savage Universal backgrounds. ColorReader EZ is pocket-sized, Bluetooth-enabled color matching device that lets you quickly scan the flat surface of an object’s color to find its Savage Universal background color match (as well as paint color match, RBG, Hex and CIE Lab color data) in an instant.

The portable device and its accompanying phone app let you scan and organize your color matches easily, by client, project, palette, subject, etc., and you can share color matches and palettes as quickly and easily as you create them with your clients, staff – anyone!

Jay P. Morgan of the Slanted Lens recently used the ColorReader EZ in a segment he did with Megan Amber about monochromatic portraits. You can check it out here:

There’s also a You Tube Video you can watch:

I am a visual designer and have been working in communication media for more than 20 years, creating brochures, websites, corporate designs and more. In all means of communication, color plays a central role. For example, the effect of a logo is significantly influenced by the color scheme. I start by creating the logo design in black and white. When the design is finished, color studies follow.

Here, color combinations from nature or photos often serve as inspiration. With the ColorReader I can measure color values of pictures or objects and save the color palette.

I can convert the hexadecimal value of the hue to a CMYK hue in Photoshop or Illustrator, since this is needed for print files.

This function also provides me with a color library, in which colors from Pantone or HKS are stored by default. So I can assign a color from the color library to a color that I have measured precisely with ColorReader and for which I have a unique HEX code.

What does this mean for my practice? I can now easily collect colors when I’m on the road that inspire me for my work and save them on my cell phone for later use. The ColorReader makes it so much easier for me to integrate colors into my digital workflow.

But I also often use ColorReader simply at my desk when I want to determine a color tone. Sometimes it’s objects from which you want to determine the exact color shade, like a vase, a toy car or simply color concepts in fashion or lifestyle magazines.

“With the ColorReader I now have another design tool in which to measure data in CIELAB or HEX and then create a respective color model.”

A situation that often occurs iis that a customer comes to me without digital files, such as stationery or old flyers, and wants to have a logo reproduced in shape and color, using only the analog print documents provided to me. In the past, I would take a color fan deck and compare colors in a time-consuming way to find the closest possible color, but without knowing if this was a spot color, a pantone color or a color of another standard, which risks considerable color deviation. With the ColorReader I now have another design tool in which to measure data in CIELAB or HEX and then create a respective color model in my digital workflow.

Online Tools

“I use both the ColorReader, because it gives me the necessary color reliability regardless of the lighting situation, and also online tools.”

There are some exciting tools on the internet, but in my opinion they are not an alternative to ColorReader, but rather an adjunct that work well with ColorReader. Sometimes you don’t want to integrate a color directly into Photoshop and thus into the digital workflow, but you are simply still in the phase where you’re collecting color information and inspiration.

Pantone’s Colorfinder is an exciting online solution for those who don’t want to integrate colors into Photoshop. Here you simply enter your HEX value (measured with ColorReader) into an input field and the website immediately suggests the matching Pantone colors.

https://www.pantone.com/color-finder

If you want to get the colors of a picture quickly and you need the complete color palette of a picture, I use the tool https://imagecolorpicker.com or http://colormind.io/. Here you also have the possibility to upload your own picture.

Since I usually get my inspiration from images taken with my smartphone, a little caution is required here. Every smartphone interprets colors differently depending on the manufacturer and model, and if I take pictures under artificial light, as is often the case with color and decoration concepts in interior design, I can run into problems. Smartphones are great for finding inspiration, but not reliable for color reproduction, so I use the ColorReader, because it gives me the necessary color reliability regardless of the lighting situation.

Nina Seitz
Visual Communications Designer

Simplify your holiday shopping with the gift everyone on your list will love – the ColorReader EZ! Here’s how it works; simply place the portable, Bluetooth-enabled device on the flat surface of any color you like, tap the button on the ColorReader or your smartphone and find its top 3 paint color matches along with its precise CIE LAB, Hex and RGB color values, instantly. Another tap provides you with coordinating colors, as well as room color schemes, so you’ll always know which colors go-together. ColorReader EZ’s versatility has countless uses, making it a great gift for anyone who ever needs to make a decision about color – which is pretty much all of us at one time or another! Here’s how ColorReader makes a great gift for…

New Homeowners/Apartment Dwellers – A fresh coat of paint does wonders for any place, and ColorReader EZ takes the stress and guesswork out of finding the right colors to pull together the look of any room. Whether its finding colors to go with existing elements like cabinetry, furnishings and flooring, creating a color palette for an open floor plan, or capturing color inspiration and bringing it into the living space, this handy color tool is like having a personal color consultant at your fingertips!

DIYers – Whether it’s tackling repainting a room to match your child’s favorite character bedding, giving new life to old furniture with a coat of paint, creating the sports cave of your dreams or any other countless DIY projects on your to-do list, ColorReader EZ is there to help with all your color selection decisions, so DIY jobs have professional- looking results.

Style Enthusiasts – Got a fashionista on your holiday gift list or interior design devotee who loves and is inspired by beautiful color everywhere? They’ll LOVE how the portable ColorReader EZ lets them capture color inspiration whenever it happens. They can take the color from a favorite article of clothing and reinterpret that into a room where they’ll be surrounded by their color fave, or find a perfect paint color match to a gorgeous tile they’ve found. This must-have design tool lets anyone capture color inspiration instantly (and more accurately than your smartphone could!), create, save and share color palettes with family, friends as well as paint stores, and other design professionals, in an instant.

Crafters – From quilters searching for fabrics that coordinate, to woodworkers looking for the right color undertones for stains, to ceramicists, paper or textile artists looking to create captivating color palettes, ColorReader EZ is a tool that offers both accuracy and inspiration for color selection in fine and home craft projects.

Digital Designers – Is there a digital artist on your gift list? They can use the ColorReader EZ to scan colors for their precise CIE LAB, Hex and RGB values for digital use as well as easily convert CIE LAB readings to Pantone colors with Photoshop.

Photographers – Have a photographer or visual stylist on your list? They’ll be able to find Savage Universal Seamless Background Paper colors on the ColorReader EZ along with complementary and coordinating colors to incorporate set design elements with a showcasing background – perfect for photoshoot planning.

By John Walrath

As creatives, color inspires our everyday life. We see the world through a unique lens and design our lives around being able to create and be inspired by what we see and experience. A portable way to capture those inspirational colors we find opens up so many creative opportunities. With its many hobby and professional uses, ColorReader EZ is a valuable tool to get color right.

Like many parents, my wife and I are facing the reality of what the 2020-21 school year will look like. After much discussion, we have made the decision to homeschool our young children. Fortunately for them, my wife has taken the lead in organizing this year’s curriculum. One aspect of our children’s education we both feel deeply about is a strong presence of the arts.

One approach we have taken is to introduce them to a famous artists’ work by creating art that mimics a particular aspect or distinctive trait of that artist. Recently, I created a portrait of each of my daughters that drew inspiration from Andy Warhol. I created these portraits with the intention of hanging a print of each in their rooms.

As photographers, when creating an image, we don’t always know where it will be presented, but when we do, it’s important to craft it so it will complement its surroundings. This is the perfect opportunity to use a tool like ColorReader EZ to create color palettes that enhance images.

I used a simple portrait of each of our daughters captured for this purpose. Warhol is known for his use of color and repeated motifs. I mimicked a classic Warhol composition for this artwork. To create the color palette for these portraits, I first used ColorReader EZ to measure the color of each bedroom wall where the portrait will hang.

A difficult decision for any creative work is color selection. Color has meaning and emotion; it can breathe life into a project. It is critical to get color choice right to communicate with color effectively.

The ColorReader EZ app enables a user to confidently make critical color decisions. After measuring a color with the device, along with a precise paint color match, the ColorReader EZ app also provides colors that complement your matched color as well as offers coordinating color schemes such as Complementary, Triad, Analogous and Monochromatic color relationships.

To create these images, I thought the Analogous and Triad color relationship provided the boldest, Andy Warhol-inspired color relationship. The ColorReader EZ app allows you to identify the exact RGB values of each of these coordinating colors. In Photoshop, I was able to enter these color values to paint them into the artwork.

In conclusion, no matter what the artistic application, color identification and color choice are critical for effective color communication. In this application, my color choice for this artwork impacted the presentation. Whether it is artwork creation, interior design or homeowner DIY projects, ColorReader EZ takes the guesswork out of color selection. When you are confident in color selection, you can use color to create the artistic impact you desire.