how to get vibrant colors??

[nibedita]

hi all,

I'm new to this site.
I am not a photographer but i like taking pics.

I'm from India.recently we had 'Holi' festival of colors.i took some pics but i did not get the exact colors and pics did not reflect the mood of festival also..

I hope with the help of your suggestions i can improve my photography.


Canon 550D at 55mm; 1/125s, f/5.6, iso400

thanks for your time.

Regards,
Nibedita

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Nibedita,

Welcome to the CiC forums from me, great to have you dive right in with a good question and a picture.

The most obvious things with this are that you used the on camera flash, which will flatten the subject's features and there seems to be a strong light source off to camera left which has resulted in a lot of vieling flare reducing contrast.

I almost wonder how clean your lens/front element is, because this is more than I would expect.
It also isn't very sharp, is it possible the girl continued to move towards you after focus had locked?

To get the kind of results you see here will require shooting RAW and post processing your images.

What software do you have available for PP?

I did this with CS5, but it would be equally possible with Elements or even GIMP.

Local Contrast Enhancement with UnSharp mask (35%, 70px, 0 threshold)
Reduce size to 700px
Set levels for black point using histogram
Sharpen with USM (170%, 0.3px, 0 threshold)



The "amounts" I used to contrast enhance and sharpen are 2 to 4 times what I'd normally use because the capture was lacking in those respects.

The key to vibrant colours is an accurate black point and a little local contrast enhancement.

Cheers,

[jeeperman]

Hello Nibedita and welcome!
Not sure of which program you are useing for your PP and if you are not....no time like the present to start to learn. This quick edit was done by opening levels and adjusting the clipping points in each channel. I then gave it a quick adjust on the contrast slider and finished it off with a bit of sharpening. Hope this helps.

[jeeperman]

Ooh I see now I hit the contrast slider away to hard. Ahh I also see Dave beat me to it and has you sorted better anyhow.

[Kris V]

Just for practice:
Converted to LAB and duplicated the layer.
Lightness Channel: Apply image om channel a - blending mode: overlay
a channel: apply image on itself - overlay. Same for b channel.
Blended this layer in Normal mode at 75% opacity.
Reconverted to RGB

[rpcrowe]

Hi Nibedita,

I have often wondered if when shooting this festival, some of the color material, might splash on the camera and lens.

My plans would be, if I were shooting this festival, to keep my camera/lens covered/protected, until the moment when I shoot and then cover/protect the camera/lens again.


It almost looks like the lens might have been dirty or had been dirty and was cleaned not too well.

This would give an overall diffuse and dull look to an image.

That's just an idea!

[Scott Stephen]

A low-tech suggestion would be to employ a lens-hood. It looks like it was a bright day, and you were shooting somewhat towards the light. That can cause colors to desaturate/wash out a bit.

The hood certainly can't hurt, and could at least protect the lens from bumps as well as from flying paint. That looks like a lot of fun, but personally I'd be scared to death to take my camera out in a paint-war!

[Scott Stephen]

But yes, it also looks like maybe the lens had been wiped clean with a less-than-clean cloth.
Or possibly it is even "fog" on/in the glass? Could taking a camera out of a cool air-conditioned room or car and into a muggy steamy paint-fight fog the glass up?