Value: light and dark
Value is the relative lightness or darkness of a tone. A picture with clear, well-organised values reads well even in black and white. Most colour problems are actually value problems.
Step by step
- Make a 9-step value scale: a strip of nine boxes from white paper to your darkest dark, with even jumps between neighbours.
- Squint at your subject. Squinting simplifies values and makes it easier to group them.
- Group the subject into three main values first — light, middle and dark. Draw a small thumbnail using only these three.
- Find the lightest light and the darkest dark and place them early. Everything else is judged between those two.
- Compare values side by side rather than judging them in isolation; a grey looks lighter next to black and darker next to white (simultaneous contrast).
- Check your work in greyscale: photograph it and turn the saturation down, or use the value readout in the colour tool on this site.
Common mistakes
- Using too many mid-greys so nothing stands out.
- Making shadows too light out of fear of going dark.
- Judging a value against white paper instead of against its neighbours.
Practice exercise
Paint or shade a 5-step and a 9-step value scale. Then do three 2-inch thumbnails of a landscape photo using only three values.