The partial color one seems both more stark, and more real. It feels "dry". It feels colder; the full color one feels humid, like mid-summer. the partial color tells more of a story.
Well, that's more thought than I put into it!!!
When assessing the original (full-color) version I felt that the interest in the picture was the bridge, not the scenery. But I felt my attention being drawn to the blue sky and the green hill in the background, away from the bridge. So I thought the picture was a good candidate for b&w conversion.
After converting I thought the b&w version was an improvement, but it seemed flat. So then I thought about a colorizing-type of treatment with the strongest treatment to the bridge to keep the focus on the bridge. And that's how I wound up with the final version.
The full color version is much more faithful to the original scene, but the partial color version speaks to me much more of "California".
It draws the eye in to point out more detail. Got my vote!
Sue
That was the idea. The bridge is cement and so doesn't have a lot of color. To my eye, in the full color version the green of the background hill, the ice plant in the foreground, and the blue sky compete with the contrast of the bridge for attention. In the colorized version, the color remains at full strength on the bridge, but the color levels everywhere else are muted, and are increasingly muted as the eye moves away from the bridge. Thus the bridge maintains focus both by having the strongest contrast and the most natural color. While the contrast effect is obvious, the colorization is more subtle - but still effective IMHO.
+++++++
For the technical purists, this photo isn't a true colorization, because colorization means that you add toning to a black and white. This photo is a blend of a full-color and a b&w, but the end result is similar to toning, is much easier to do, and IMHO works better with this photo than would a standard tinting process. See
here for a discussion of a previous photo in this thread where I did a true toning effect.
Looking forward to more.
