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

[resident]

just had a look at them and tried the process on a pic...worked great

thanks again
--
badui bourizk

 

[Peano]

It depends on the image, of course. But in this case I used selective color adjustments. Didn't get as much from that as I wanted, so I added a blank layer in soft light mode and painted one swipe across the trees with a medium green, and two swipes with black across the top of the sky (large soft brush at 20% opacity) to deepen the blue. Finally, I duped the image, changed blend mode to soft light, and reduce opacity to 30%.



--
~ Peano

 

[Tom Bennett]

this one on action central works very well
it is called lab saturation
http://www.atncentral.com/download.htm

 

[Myer]

I am a LAB convert as well.

While the chapter summaries make easy reading, I highly recommend the book. Since the Dan Margulis book is probably the only book on the topic, selection is easy.

I have read some pages and chapters several times to try and understand was he's doing.

Essentially, the process is as follows:
Increase green/magenta contrast ("a" channel).
Increase blue/yellow contrast ("b" channel).
Steepen the critical area for bettwer contrast ("L" channel).
Adjust Shadows/Highlights("L" channel).
Apply USM ("L" channel).

I have also learned some semi-related topic such as channel masking reading portions of the book.

It takes a while to get a grip on the topic and get rid of the headache, but I now actually think in LAB.

i guess it's kind of like getting better in a foreign language. You know you're making progrees when you begin to think in that language.

 

[Myer]

To find the spot where you want to apply the steepest part of the "S" curve - open curves and slide the cursor around the most significant part of the actual photo. Hopefully you'll see a reather small part of the curve with a circle there (I think it's a circle). Make that the steepest part of the curve.

 

[shawn finger]

Just tried the painting with light using several different colors and adjusted shadows and highlights to get some of the mountain detail back. I realize this is a different image than the one you used but do you think I over did it or on the right track?



Thanks!

 

[cspringer]

Not overdone at all...very natural looking.

Just tried the painting with light using several different colors
and adjusted shadows and highlights to get some of the mountain
detail back. I realize this is a different image than the one you
used but do you think I over did it or on the right track?



Thanks!

 

[Vik_R]

Used a workflow I picked up around here at some point that often gives interesting results with water:
-- Layer via copy
-- Desaturate
-- Invert
-- Set mode to overlay
-- Gaussian Blur - Radius, 80

Then darkened the midtones in the layers dialog