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What is your technique to make colors pop in post processing?

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shawn finger

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I realize that is a vague question, here is a link so you can see what I’m looking for to make these colors pop: http://www.chuckspage.com/photography/101406/rainier.html I’m mainly interested in getting the Reflection Lake photos to pop and I know that these images are a little small (700 wide for the landscape framing) but I’m wondering what your technique is that you would use under these circumstances. I shot these in RAW and all most all of them are comprised of two different exposures to try to capture the dynamic range. Right now they just look really flat to me and I know that they can be much better but I just don’t have the experience in post processing. I did not use any filters, I have already done some boosting of the saturation in the RAW conversion which was typically +10 up to +15 ( I didn’t want to push it too much because I was afraid that it would look over done and introduce artifacts). If you have any links or can share your technique, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or techniques you share!
 


I quickly made a few adjustments just to go in the direction you seem to want to take it.

First I set the white and black points using a threshold layer and levels.

Secondly I bumped up the saturation a few points but only the blue.

Finally I did a smart sharpen which was overkill on this small image and created some artifacts but which it should have been able to handle on your original.

If you need more specifics than this, let me know. This was done in CS2.

--
Scott
 
Curves in LAB mode.



--
Ron in Vernon, B.C.
Panasonic FZ50
Panasonic FZ30
Canon 10D
Argus C3
Kodak Brownie Hawkeye
 
Here's one I did:

o Recover highlights with shadow/highlights to bring back detail in the mountain
o Convert to LAB mode

o Restore some detail in the foliage with a small shadow adjustment on the L channel with shadow/highlights, but mask off part of the effect from the foreground to keep it a little darker so the focus stays on the center of the photo

o Add an S- curve on the L-channel to increase contrast which, in my opinion, is the key to getting colors to pop. Mask off sky and clouds to keep them from getting too bright.

o Slightly steepen the A and B channels to enhance colors - be careful not to go too far
o Use USM to enhance local contrast
o Smarpen with smart sharpen

Retouch:



Your original:



--
John
Gallery: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/portfolio
 
cspringer, thanks for taking a look at the images. I like the colors you have gotten. I'm familar with the pwl action and use it a lot but I have never done it with color, do you have a link to explain this procedure or if you have a few moments can you explain it to me. I'm assuming you select a color for the shadows or highlights but how do you know which color to use? Thanks again for taking the time for this, it is greatly appreciated!
 
Thanks for taking the time to look at and work on the photo. I completly forgot to just selct the the blue chanel for saturation adjustment and to sharpen. Sharpening is always the last thing I do and to be honest, I think I forgot to do it on all the photos.... lack of sleep. Thanks again!
 
Hi Shawn,

I edited one of the photos and didn't see that you were looking for the ones with the lake reflections.

Here's the one I did...



Original...



Process used:
Changed to 16 bit
Changed to Lab Color
Curves for higher contrast/mask out the blown areas after adjustments
Highlight/Shadow recovery
Curves on a and b channel
Changed back to RGB
Selective Sharpening w/darken and lighten layers

I hope you don't mind that I did this one instead of a lake image.

If you find the colors over the top, you could lessen the curve on the a and b channel.

I hope this helps,
Dan
 
I normally use an orange color for both shadow and highlights for landscapes and sample the skin for portraits. If it gets too saturated I'll switch to black and white.
shawn finger said:
cspringer, thanks for taking a look at the images. I like the
colors you have gotten. I'm familar with the pwl action and use it
a lot but I have never done it with color, do you have a link to
explain this procedure or if you have a few moments can you explain
it to me. I'm assuming you select a color for the shadows or
highlights but how do you know which color to use? Thanks again
for taking the time for this, it is greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...
 
Hello, I tried messing with the curves in LAB mode but to be honest I have know idea what to do. I grabbed the curve in different areas and it looke horrible. I tried the other channels and it looked even worse, is there something that I'm missing? I started over back in the Lightness channel but no matter what part of the curve I grab is looks horrible. Can you please explain to me what you did. Thanks for taking the time to help an idiot!!
 
shawn finger said:
Hello, I tried messing with the curves in LAB mode but to be honest
I have know idea what to do. I grabbed the curve in different
areas and it looke horrible. I tried the other channels and it
looked even worse, is there something that I'm missing? I started
over back in the Lightness channel but no matter what part of the
curve I grab is looks horrible. Can you please explain to me what
you did. Thanks for taking the time to help an idiot!!
Click to expand...
Read this http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18308 to understand the basics of steepening the A and B curves in LAB mode to enhance color. There's a chapter by chapter writeup of a whole book on LAB here: http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=18203 .
--
John
Gallery: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/portfolio
 
when you say
" o Add an S- curve on the L-channel to increase contrast which"

so you mean to select channel, lightness channel and then go to image-adjustments-curves and get it to look like an 'S' shape? I'm relatively new to post processing so forgive me for being such an idiot. Thanks for your time.
 
thank you very much for the links! I only looked at them briefly but will spend some time with them tomorrow, looks like some great information! Thanks again for helping me out and pointing me in the right direction!
 
Danny Bezak, not a problem, I like how you made the colors pop in this photos. Another poster just sent me links with a ton of info on adjusting the curves in the LAB mode as I was not grasping that. I will be reading up on that tomorrow as I need to crash for an early moring tomorrow. Thanks again, you really made that image pop, just what I was looking for!
 
shawn finger said:
when you say
" o Add an S- curve on the L-channel to increase contrast which"
so you mean to select channel, lightness channel and then go to
image-adjustments-curves and get it to look like an 'S' shape? I'm
relatively new to post processing so forgive me for being such an
idiot. Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...
Yes, select the lightness channel and then make a curve that looks like this:



This is commonly called an S-curve. I find that most of the time, image pop comes more from contrast than it does from just increasing color saturation.

The connection between curves and contrast is as follows. The steeper the curve is at any given tonal range, the greater the contrast will be in that tonal range. The slope of the curve represents the spacing between adjacent tones. Make the curve steeper and it will spread the tones out where it's steep, increasing visual contrast.

Steepening the curve in one spot requires flattening it somewhere else, so it's all a tradeoff, you can increase contrast in some places and decrease it in other places. An S-curve like I have above, increases contrast in the mid-tones (usually the most important tones) and decreases contrast in the darks and the lights. You can think of it logically as pulling the darks down, the brights up and stretching the mid-tones out to fill the new space.

Here's another posting on histograms and curves that many have found useful http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=401825#post401825 .
--
John
Gallery: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/portfolio
 
A trick I use that many times bring good results, is easy to test and saturates in a much more natural way than the standard saturation.

Create a copy layer and put the layer mode to Overlay or Soft light, this increases saturation and also adds a lot of contrast.

Create a new copy layer but this time set the mode to luminosity, this leaves only the saturation gained in the middle layer. You can decrease the transparency of this layer to gain some contrast.

This is my 2 minutes try with the middle layer in Overlay mode and the upper at 70% transparency



The technique can be then refined masking parts of the image, adding yet another middle layer to gain more saturation, maybe blurring the middle layer etc but the basic structure gives you many ideas and quite great control

Regards

--
Juan http://jtrujillo.net/blog
 
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