Deeper, richer colors without over saturating

[SaLynn]

Hello all!! (I hope this is the correct place for this discussion, if not feel free to move it )
I have an issue that has been making me crazy for some time now. When i edit my photos in photoshop and/or lightroom, i cant seem go get the colors as rich and deep as i want them without giving them too much of an over saturated look. And that dreamy, hazy look... i wish. (I can get the haze with anyou overlay but its still not what im going for) Absolutely making me crazy. I am a huge fan of LJ Holloway's work and a local photographer Bobbie DeBirto, and would love to be able to accomplish something even half as good as what they do.

If anyone could give me some tips or tell me how to achieve such looks i would appreciate it! Thanks

Examples at .... MOD EDIT - Neither of the links provided actually works. Both URLs are unrecognised.

[dubaiphil]

SaLynn

Try Fredminanda.com or photocamel.com - Lisa Holloway posts on there and is pretty approachable. Also check on her blog for processing and shooting tips.

She's using Canon and some L glass, which will help of course, but her pp work is beautiful and generally natural - sometimes a little oversharpened for my taste but generally bang on the money.

[Shadowman]

It's possible to get those rich colors right out of the camera,and you could use your editing program to tone down the rest of the image. On the Nikon system you can set the Picture Control to Vivid, Neutral, Standard, Monochrome and still capture in RAW format. The end result when set to Vivid can be stunning in certain lighting conditions (overcast days) and oversaturated on sunny days. If you want to go the post processing route you can increase clarity and vibrance in acr.

[davidedric]

Hi,

It might also help if you posted a couple of images to show what you are managing to do now, and what is lacking.

For richer colours, and sorry if this is too obvious, but the Vibrance slider in Lightroom is designed to increase the saturation of unsaturated colours.

Dave

[SaLynn]

Thank you everyone for helping me out. Lots of good suggestions
David, yes i tried to upload a couple of my images but they wouldn't load from my phone for some reason (normally i have no trouble loading from my phone to forums).

Here is a before and after shot of my beautiful little niece. Critique and constructive criticism is more than welcome and muchg appreciated!!! As i said, i do have Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 so my editing is done in those programs.

[Manfred M]

Sal - In the images you posted, the issue is really in the skin tones of your niece. They are getting too orange for my taste.

I pretty well exclusively use Photoshop, but Lightroom uses the same RAW engine and has similar controls / effects. Instead of using the "saturation" slider to boost the colour depth, try using the "vibrance" instead. Saturation affects all colours equally, whereas vibrance leaves the skin tones looking natural. If you shoot raw, and use ACR the vibrance slider is on the basic tab. You might also want to increase the clarity as well (just above the vibrance slider).

I tend to add a bit of both in most of my shots.

[SaLynn]

Sal - In the images you posted, the issue is really in the skin tones of your niece. They are getting too orange for my taste.

I pretty well exclusively use Photoshop, but Lightroom uses the same RAW engine and has similar controls / effects. Instead of using the "saturation" slider to boost the colour depth, try using the "vibrance" instead. Saturation affects all colours equally, whereas vibrance leaves the skin tones looking natural. If you shoot raw, and use ACR the vibrance slider is on the basic tab. You might also want to increase the clarity as well (just above the vibrance slider).

I tend to add a bit of both in most of my shots.

I agree about the skin. It was getting too orange. This is why i asked about the color richness because it always seems to get over saturated the more i mess with the sliders. At times only a couple of small changes work but the more i look at it the less it satisfies me colorwise.
Thank you for your thoughts I agree 100%

[Loose Canon]

Hi there SaLynn (real name?)!

Have a look-see at this and see if it might be useful.

This tutorial was posted by Willie back in ought '11. A most excellent photographer and all around great guy.

[ajohnw]

I had a quick play. Ist change was doing a little work on the original. Lightened up the dark end of things - probably a mistake. Increased saturation but found well before the point you reached the face was way off so reduced it in the mid tones and applied less. Bit of mostly mid tone and slight low tone tone mapping to crisp the shot up. Then some sharpening as there is a big reduction is size. That gave this. I don't think the T shirt can be pushed any further.



I then switched to another processing package, Lightzone. You might want to try it. It's free. With that I applied a sepia tone using the eyedropper to set the highlight to the ladies cheek. Lightzone has a lot of relighting / tinting options. This was the result - on the whole image this time.



Probably some way towards where you want to get.. It has an awful number of filters to play with. This one for instance isn't sepia any more once the eyedropper is used as that caused it to more or less retain the face colouring.

Hope this helps. Personally I am not a fan of what you seek and prefer a little bit better than reality rather than obvious false colouring often along with over sharpening.

John
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[davidedric]

Another possibility, if you want to try another product, is Nik's Viveza. That gives very precise control over saturation (among other things) in areas that you define.

[ajohnw]

I just noticed that I started with a green reflection on the ladies face.

Lightzone has selectable regions too. Bit odd in my opinion and am hoping to get it changed. The effect that is to be used has to be activated before the selection process actually works. I mentioned this one as it's relatively easy to use. There is another Photivo. Also free. This one is capable of doing all sorts of things and I believe had selection added recently.

It has it's own Flickr group. Shows all sorts of tastes are catered for

http://www.flickr.com/groups/photivo/

This is one of the developers pages

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40436369@N04/

I do like some of his OTT work.

I generally use a package called Fotoxx to get a photo "right" 1st as I did with this one right? tastes vary. This one has full retouching features but is purely a linux application. For layers at the moment I use The Gimp. The other 2 I have mentioned create and destroy layers as needed and offer various strength options.

I only run opens source software as a matter of principle.

John
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[SaLynn]

Thanks for all the responses guys!! Much appreciated
David, do you use niks often and is it expensive like ps or free? Im interested in trying it but after droping a good chunk in cs6 i may have to wait a bit before purchasing niks if i like it. I tried to look at the site but for some reason it wont load right on my phone at the moment. Definately going to look into it though
John, I am definately going to try the program Lightzone. I Like that its still in development and they listen to tips and suggestions from users.

[ajohnw]

Thanks for all the responses guys!! Much appreciated
David, do you use niks often and is it expensive like ps or free? Im interested in trying it but after droping a good chunk in cs6 i may have to wait a bit before purchasing niks if i like it. I tried to look at the site but for some reason it wont load right on my phone at the moment. Definately going to look into it though
John, I am definately going to try the program Lightzone. I Like that its still in development and they listen to tips and suggestions from users.

LightZone has an odd history. The developer used to charge for it but made such a good job of it Apple approached him to do similar work for them. A couple of years ago he still kept it to himself but at some point handed it over making it Open Source.

You might like to try Photivo too but as with all such software it will take a while to get into it.

What I find is that different packages have different facilities and certain things are easier / quicker to do in one rather than the other so periodically I have a play with the facilities in a new package to see what they do.

John
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[davidedric]

David, do you use niks often and is it expensive like ps or free?

Sadly, the "Nik Collection" is not free. Current price is $150 (are you in the US, by the way?). It is a collection of six products which share their patent "U point" technology. This is what allows you to have very fine control over defined areas of the image, without the use of layers. If you have LR5, it works a bit like the new radial filter, but enormously more versatile and powerful.

Nik was an independent company, and used to sell each product separately. A few months ago it was acquired by Google, and so far as I know you now have to buy the whole collection. On the other hand, Google reduced the price of the collection from around $450 (I think) to $150, so it wasn't all bad news. As usual, there is a two week free trial.

What you get for your money is:

Viveza. The one we've been talking about. Here is an example of where I used it to selectively desaturate parts of an image: Carmine bee eaters

Silver Efex Pro. Probably the jewel in the crown if you want to move into black and white. Used by many on CiC, including such hot shots as Donald and Daisy Mae.

Color Efex Pro. Wide range of different filters, all completely tailorable, to produce more "interesting" images.

HDR Efex Pro. Seems like a pretty reasonable HDR program, either for multiple images or for extracting detail from a single image

Dfine. Noise reduction. Generally, not better than ps or LR, except that it allows differential control of sharpness in different parts of the image

Sharpener Pro. Sharpening(!). Again, really only useful if you want fine control of sharpening in different parts of the image.

If you would use more than one product, I would say it was a pretty good deal, but I don't think I'd drop the $'s just for Viveza.

A bit puzzled by your remark about the phone. Presumably you were away from your computer? Nik is only available by download.

Have fun,

Dave

[nimitzbenedicto]

One tool I like in Lightzone is its "region tool". It's much more powerful than LR5's radial filter and Nik's control point.
( exaggerated to make it easier to see.)

[SaLynn]

[QUOTE=davidedric;349053]Sadly, the "Nik Collection" is not free. Current price is $150 (are you in the US, by the way?). It is a collection of six products which share their patent "U point" technology. This is what allows you to have very fine control over defined areas of the image, without the use of layers. If you have LR5, it works a bit like the new radial filter, but enormously more versatile and powerful.

Nik was an independent company, and used to sell each product separately. A few months ago it was acquired by Google, and so far as I know you now have to buy the whole collection. On the other hand, Google reduced the price of the collection from around $450 (I think) to $150, so it wasn't all bad news. As usual, there is a two week free trial.

What you get for your money is:

Viveza. The one we've been talking about. Here is an example of where I used it to selectively desaturate parts of an image: Carmine bee eaters

Silver Efex Pro. Probably the jewel in the crown if you want to move into black and white. Used by many on CiC, including such hot shots as Donald and Daisy Mae.

Color Efex Pro. Wide range of different filters, all completely tailorable, to produce more "interesting" images.

HDR Efex Pro. Seems like a pretty reasonable HDR program, either for multiple images or for extracting detail from a single image

Dfine. Noise reduction. Generally, not better than ps or LR, except that it allows differential control of sharpness in different parts of the image

Sharpener Pro. Sharpening(!). Again, really only useful if you want fine control of sharpening in different parts of the image.

If you would use more than one product, I would say it was a pretty good deal, but I don't think I'd drop the $'s just for Viveza.

A bit puzzled by your remark about the phone. Presumably you were away from your computer? Nik is only available by download.

Have fun,

Dave


Yes, i was on a break at work at the time i posted that message so i posted it via my smartphone and for some reason the website wouldn't load right on it.
In any case, i will most likely try the trial and if i like it i may purchase it. It sounds like an amazing program though

[ajohnw]

It's worth adding that many reckon that the GIMP can do everything that Photoshop can do. I have seen comments that the Gimp lacks adjustment layers - usually related to no destructive but it's so easy to duplicate an image. Plenty of tutorials about especially on youtube even to the extent of making it look like Photoshop.

Often including the ones Dave listed other software is creating layers and masks, working on them and deleting them automatically without the user being aware of it. A side effect of any layer or mask based approach in any package is that it's none destructive as far as the original image is concerned until they are merged/flattened. An example of that is shown here where there is a tool but also a better way of doing it. The same thing and other variations eg transparency changes via a brush, can be done with any adjustment including saturation.

http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-tool-convolve.html

If it appears the Gimp can't do what Photoshop can do it's usually a case of figuring out just how they do it with layers. In the Gimp it may involve using more than one. There is often help on that aspect about on the web.

PS Do't ask me how - Fotoxx does all of that for me but I do feel the need to learn about all of the facilities that are available via layer and mask manipulations.

GIMP 3 should be available in the not too distant future, I hope. That should be quite something. It's been a long time coming.

John
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[Manfred M]

It's worth adding that many reckon that the GIMP can do everything that Photoshop can do. I have seen comments that the Gimp lacks adjustment layers - usually related to no destructive but it's so easy to duplicate an image.

Let me agree to disagree here; I would consider this to be a "fatal flaw".

Much of my more advanced work in Photoshop involves adjustment layers / clipping masks with a layer mask. Being able to go back to selectively brush things in and out with different hardness, opacity or shape of a brush can't be done particularly well or efficiently by duplicating a layer and editing it destructively.

[ajohnw]

I'm not to clear on this aspect Manfred. It's an area I want to get into but it's slow going so I can not be definite about any of the following.

Taking a for instance if some one uses curves on a layer it should be possible to restore it completely to what it was or continuously change it to achieve what ever effect is desired unless at some point info is lost eg a brightness change exceeds the colour space. When brushes are used to change masks or layers then the change to that is permanent apart from undo or a brush that does the opposite. I thought that the latter was true of photoshop as well. Basically I am not entirely sure photoshop has any advantage over the gimp in this respect.. If you google gimp adjustment layers you will find some bleats from ex photoshop users and also suggestions for doing it the gimp way which usually uses more layers.

I just watched a photoshop video on clipping masks. No problems with gimp there just different. It's one method of adding vignetting which is also directly lacking. In that case the gradient of the "clipping" is changed but it needn't be.

I believe Colin used an adjustment layer on a dog/little lady black and white photo recently. I didn't have much of a problem doing the same thing in the gimp. I just found a tutorial and modified it to suite what Colin had done. Biggest problem was the press the anchor button instruction - didn't have one so eventually found it via a right click. Also matching Colin's dodging etc. I suspect that is because I did it at the wrong time.

I have a feeling that the gimps biggest criticism should be that it's purely 3x8bit colour space. I suspect most of the devs are graphics artists and that is all they need. This is due to change at some point but it means that currently the conversion to 8bit must bear that in mind.

My problem in this area is that there isn't much incentive. Fotoxx uses 32bit floating point colour. The brushes are interesting. Say I use any of sharpening, saturation, brightness changes or any of the other filters if when done I don't like it the base settings can be changed and the brushed areas will change accordingly. Gradation changes of any type are related to tone via a bright to dark curve which can be changed too. Tone mapping is related to contrast in a similar fashion. There are also several selection tools. No layers available to the user though - all handled by the package. How is this all done down below in the software - mostly layers and masks.

John
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[Colin Southern]

Hi SaLynn,

You may be somewhat surprised to learn that what you have here ISN'T a saturation issue - it's a levels issue.

You've basically got 3 issues going on;

1. You haven't set your black clipping point correctly, which has left a gray cast / washed-out look over the entire image.

2. With the black point set correctly, the the white point needs to be re-adjusted to stop the image looking too dark.

Just those two things will fix the young lady, but still leaves a problem with the foliage that's in shadow, so

3. To fix that you can either hand dodge or (in my case) I used a digital GND filter along with a touch of highlight recovery.

The result (below) returns the saturation to the top and improves the skin tones - all without making ANY saturation adjustments.

All colours are sensitive to certain levels of brightness; above that point they start to washout (as in the case here), below that point they go too dark.

Hope this helps



PS: With this kind of shot you really need to be using some kind of fill light. Not sure if you've seen my "School of Portraiture" series, but you might find some things there that help.

School of Portraiture - Links to Lessons 1 through 8