Photoshop value experiments

[Chris Saper]

A couple of years ago I attende a Portrait Society of America lecture given by Bart Lindstrom, where he introduced his use of posterization. I agree that the posterizing (color reduction) tool is one that absolutely bears merit examining.

However, there are significant problems in value compression inherent in film (and which seem to be far less in digital imaging, yet still not what you see in life).

This means that you are putting an image into your computer which already has value clumping. When you use the posterizing tool, the computer has no more information than what it stared with, and there is a likelihood that the already compressed values will express themselves in a compounded fashion in the posterized image, with a probablility of further compressing the values.

That being said, I still think that posterizing is a good tool to utilize, as long as you are cognizant of its limitations. In fact, anytime any of us are forced to think in a limited number of values - that's a good thing.