How do I get vidid color images?

[JHAJHAANGIE]

I studied photography in school and used to be quite the active photographer. I mainly shot black and white film. After having children, I found less time for picture taking while working a full time job. Now I am trying to get back into it. I have been shooting digital now for the past 6 years still doing mainly black and white but color now and then. I use adobe cs2 for editing photos. My question is that I am noticing in other photographers work such vidid colors in their color portraits or many other images and I am wondering "how do I do that" Is there a software that I can use. Is it something that can be done in photoshop? I would also like to know how to improve the eyes in my pictures? I want to get those crystal clear eyes on my subjects. Any advice, greatly appreciated.

[Colin Southern]

It's many things - first and foremost though, it comes down to colour management, and that means things like:

- Shooting a spectrally neutral reference frame as part of the session, and then using that to correctly white-balance the shot in post-processing

- Shooting a calibrated colour card and then using that to build a custom camera profile

- Working from a correctly calibrated and profiled monitor

- Ensuring the images are presented using the correct colourspace (sRGB)

Get everything right, and ... Viola (not vivid, but accurate)





If you're talking VIVID colour then accuracy is less important - it's more a case of pushing things appropriately in post-processing, but it's still important to be working from a calibrated and profiled monitor, and present the images using the correct colourspace ...



In terms of post-processing eyes in portraits, that's almost a lesson in itself, typically, we ...

- Select and enhance catchlights

- Select and enhance eye colour, brightness, and contrast

- Retouch whites & lashes

- Sharpen

Kayla is a good example of fully retouched eyes ...



Hope this helps

And welcome to CiC

[hoddo]

In Photoshop try this...

duplicate your layer then convert your image to LAB mode selecting not to flatten. For the dupe layer change the blend mode to Overlay of Softlight which will definately produce an over the top look. So, double click an the dupe layer and a call out box appears. Mid screen uncheck the L box. You're still left with potentially over the top image colour but here's where you start using layer masks and opacity settings to arrive at the look you're after. You can add any adjustments etc and then when the image is exactly how you want it I usually flatten the image then convert back to RGB. Works great.

Oh and just before you convert back go to you channels palette and using the luminosity channel, sharpen the image using that channel before converting to RGB.

[JHAJHAANGIE]

Thank you

[JHAJHAANGIE]

Just wanted to let you know I have been using your tips and it makes a big difference. Thanks so much

[Colin Southern]

Just wanted to let you know I have been using your tips and it makes a big difference. Thanks so much

Another satisfied customer

Glad we could help.