Color possesses a strong emotional influence, especially when depicted through vibrant, colorful images. Discover useful tips on selecting high-quality stock photography based on color to captivate your audience. Color has the power to shape the mood of your designs and has a psychological impact on marketing campaigns and branding projects. Beyond lighting, staging, and subject matter, color is the technical key to evoking your audience’s response, making designs more captivating, inviting, and memorable. In this article, we will explore the importance of color theory in choosing stock photos and provide guidance on using different colors successfully in your designs. Let’s examine the dos and don’ts of selecting and utilizing colorful pictures.
Image generated by Shutterstock’s AI Image Generator.
Clockwise: License these images via Shutterstock.AI, Denis Moskvinov, Victoria Chudinova, and Natalja Petuhova.
Why Is Color Theory Important for Choosing Stock Photos?
Color has a profound psychological impact on viewers due to environmental, cultural, and historical conditioning. When viewing a colorful image, the audience already has preconceived notions associated with different colors. Marketers and designers can leverage these notions by skillfully incorporating color into their work. In this article, we will explore a range of guiding principles for selecting colorful pictures and effectively utilizing them in your designs. Read on to discover helpful tips on using advancing colors, color saturation, color isolation, color contrast, color psychology, and black and white photography.
License this image via Photo_Bait.
License this image via macro.viewpoint.
1. Advancing Colors
Warning signs, high-visibility jackets, and the Golden Gate Bridge all have one thing in common: the use of strong, warm colors like red, orange, or yellow. These colors are chosen to ensure they catch people’s attention. Strong, warm colors offer optimal contrast against a blue sky or ocean since they are opposite each other on the color wheel. In photography, attention-grabbing warm colors are referred to as advancing colors, while cooler colors that fade into the background are known as receding colors.
Therefore, to effectively gather viewers’ attention, utilize advancing colors to highlight important elements or subjects within an image. By incorporating high contrast between advancing and receding colors, you can enhance the impact of your design. For instance, a warm-colored subject becomes even more eye-catching when set against a cooler background. When it comes to trendy advances in color psychology, consider using images featuring hot orange and teal green, or neon red and royal blue.
Clockwise from top left: License these images via H_Ko, Golubovy, Kasefoto, and DimaBerlin.
Avoid using too many receding colors in a single image, as warm colors naturally draw more attention compared to cooler colors like blue, green, and gray, which tend to fade into the background. An image dominated by washed-out, cooler hues without any advancing colors may fail to captivate the audience’s attention, resulting in a dull appearance. Take the AI-generated image below, for example, the street scene is primarily composed of cool, muted colors like gray and blue. The absence of advancing colors leaves no focal point for the eye to focus on, resulting in a muted and monotonous image. By increasing the saturation of the yellow tone on the building at the right, the image becomes more attention-grabbing through contrast.
In this image, created using Shutterstock’s AI Image Generator, an excess of receding colors results in a dull, dreary image (left). Increasing the saturation and warmth of the yellow building at the right side of the image helps create contrast and make the image more attention-grabbing (right). License this image via Shutterstock.AI.
2. Color Saturation
Color saturation refers to the intensity of color in an image, also known as “chroma.” The greater the difference between a color and white, the more intense and saturated the hue. Color saturation boosts vibrancy in photographs and sets specific moods.
Avoid using oversaturated images as they can appear overly artificial and unpleasant. While intense color saturation may attract easily distracted eyes, it can be overwhelming, especially in images already rich in color like summer landscapes or colorful fashion shots. If you find yourself squinting at an image due to excessive color intensity, reduce the saturation levels to soften dominant colors.
This heavily saturated image was created using Shutterstock’s AI Image Generator. The excessive saturation of yellow and blue colors dims the details and creates a harsh visual effect in this nighttime flower shot (left). By reducing saturation, the image appears more balanced and soothing with even detail distribution (right). License this image via Shutterstock.AI.
On the other hand, increasing color saturation should be done with moderation. Colorful imagery doesn’t equate to heavily saturated imagery. Look at the multi-colored, yet calmly toned cinematography of Wes Anderson films as a benchmark. Anderson’s pastel-saturated movies highlight the importance of color, yet the intensity is often muted to maintain an overall quaint aesthetic.
In conclusion, a moderate increase in color saturation can go a long way. It won’t distract from important design elements like calls-to-action or headlines, while enhancing the mood of your campaigns. Look for a balance that keeps the image vibrant but not overpowering. In the example, insufficient saturation makes the image appear dull and flat (top left), while excessive saturation results in a brash, unappetizing appearance (bottom left). A happy medium balances vibrancy and realism (right).
License this image via Yiistocking.
Excessive color saturation can make colorful stock photos appear unattractive to look at (bottom left). License this image via Jeremy Reddington.
3. Color Isolation
Color isolation occurs when a photographer intentionally emphasizes a particular color or combination of colors as the dominant elements in an image. This effect can be achieved by muting background colors to highlight foreground colors or by creating a striking monochromatic appearance using one dominant color. Color isolation directs the viewer’s focus toward the featured color and the subject displaying that color, effectively creating a focal point in your designs.
Use neighboring colors to create balance when employing monochromatic color isolation. While monochromatic photography can effectively utilize one color throughout the entire image, applying this effect can impact clarity and details. This is especially true for darker colors since low-contrast images can be challenging to see clearly. It’s also essential to consider the psychological impact of colors in monochromatic images. While blue can be beautiful when balanced with warmer tones like purple or red, it can also evoke a cold or melancholic feel in larger doses. Introduce subtle variations in color from neighboring colors on the color wheel, such as violet and green, to offset any negative emotions in monochrome images.
In the example below, created using Shutterstock’s AI Image Generator, the monochromatic effect is too severe, making the blue colors feel expansive and dark without clear subject details. By balancing light and dark blue tones, the monochromatic color isolation becomes more appealing, with preserved subject details and vibrant color contrast.
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For brand photography in marketing designs and social media campaigns, color isolation can be particularly impactful.