Bright Yellow and Contrasting Green Not There

[Ynez]

This is my first post so here goes…. I have resolved to improve my photography. After much thought decided to dive into the post-processing scene and thus entered a giant learning curve!

In this image I wanted to capture the bright yellow and contrasting green roof of this fall scene.
This was the first day I took pics in RAW. I recently signed up with the Adobe Creative Cloud. I already had PS but didn’t use it much – not very user friendly. I’m new to LR (a bit more friendly) and trying to remember what little I knew of PS. I’m constantly clicking buttons/tools to see how it changes the image and/or reading articles online and trying to follow instruction.

I did minor edits in LR i.e., exposure, contrast, highlights, clarity, vibrancy and saturation. I also used gradient filter to darken the clouds.

The colors are not bright the way I saw them. Should I have done edits in PS? How can I get the colors to pop? I welcome C&C. Thank you.

[Wavelength]

Hi there; i attempted some brightness/saturation etc. adjustments in the basic editor picasa( it is a lazy man's alternative though )and i can guarantee it has much potential....you just have to unveil it...

[Rebel]

Hi Ynez and welcome to the forum

I hope you don't mind but I had a play with your image, all I did was increase the contrast and saturation:

[selig1656]

Nice pic , you can adjust temperture and tint , than colors/hue and at the end of that, saturation. Keep on tweeking till you are satisfied .Only a suggestion , I like the composition on the pic. Of course first thing is contrast and lighting/brightness to get it down.

[Manfred M]

Welcome to CiC Ynez.

You've received some fairly good advice so far. Let me add my views to the conversation.

When it comes to Lightroom (or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR)) versus Photoshop, at a high level, Lightroom and ACR are good for global adjustments and Photoshop is where you dive in to do local adjustments. Lightrooms's Develop module and ACR are identical "under the hood". The user interface is really where they differ. Both Lightroom and ACR do have some limited local edit functionality, but in general I find this functionality inferior to Photoshops.

When it comes to "pop" the two most important adjustments are setting your black point and white point. The black and white sliders are what control this and if you have black and white values in the image (and you definitely do in this shot), moving them in to where you just start to clip the black and white values are the first step I take to increase "pop".

The second place to look for "pop" is by increasing contrast in the image. The lighting in your shot is flat, so a decent boost of contrast helps too.

Boosting the Clarity and Vibrance a touch (I rarely use the saturation slider, but might in this image; usually values of 10 - 15) a bit helps too. With any non-winter outdoor shot I use the dehaze slider as well (again not a lot - values of 5 - 15). Most of my images (especially landscapes) get a tiny bit of vignette, just to draw the viewer's eyes into the image.

If you are working with raw data, you will need to do some sharpening as well.

A final step, if posting to the internet. make sure you convert your images to sRGB if you are using a wider gamut colour space. I believe Lightroom defaults to ProPhoto and if you post an image in that colour space, your output will look flat. sRGB is the default colour space of the internet.

[Rebel]

Nice post Manfred, its interesting that you say you rarely use the 'Saturation' slider as I rarely use the 'Vibrance' slider.

[Manfred M]

Nice post Manfred, its interesting that you say you rarely use the 'Saturation' slider as I rarely use the 'Vibrance' slider.

Thanks Matt.

I find that Saturation "hammers" the reds and oranges a bit too hard. If there are any people in the shot, their skin will take on an orange colour. In urban landscape shots I find that it gives me unnatural looking reds. The Vivid slider has a similar function as Saturation except in the skin tone range, so I find it generally works better for the types of shots I do, so I tend to default there.

For this shot I did suggest that I might try using the Saturation slider as I don't see any of the colours that normally cause problems in this image.

[mknittle]

Hi Ynez, Welcome to the forum. Nice Image with lots of color and contrast. With all the great advice here you will catch on faster than you think

Mark,

[DanK]

its interesting that you say you rarely use the 'Saturation' slider as I rarely use the 'Vibrance' slider.

The saturation adjustment increases saturation uniformly, while the vibrance adjustment is intended to increase the portions of the image that are relatively unsaturated. In general, my experience fits with this: saturation is a blunter tool and often leads to unnatural-looking images. For that reason, like Manfred, I rarely use the saturation adjustment. I save it for images that are flat across the board. In contrast, I use a modest vibrance adjustment in almost all images, because I find that helps the adobe standard rendering, at least with my cameras.

[Rebel]

The saturation adjustment increases saturation uniformly, while the vibrance adjustment is intended to increase the portions of the image that are relatively unsaturated. In general, my experience fits with this: saturation is a blunter tool and often leads to unnatural-looking images. For that reason, like Manfred, I rarely use the saturation adjustment. I save it for images that are flat across the board. In contrast, I use a modest vibrance adjustment in almost all images, because I find that helps the adobe standard rendering, at least with my cameras.

Great explanation Dan

[xpatUSA]

I agree with Manfred and Dan re: saturation.

I took the liberty of downloading and cropping out some yellow trees and, in the OP, there is already a little saturation clipping:



See the saturation histogram at right. Increasing saturation even more would reduce color contrast in that area.

The above is a screen capture of two instances of 'Show Image' - a rather fine app for looking at this kind of stuff.

I also agree that an increase in brightness and a good dose of local contrast would increase the "pop".

[Rebel]

The histogram, thats another thing I rarely use, other than to check highlights/shadows when I'm taking the photo.

I just use my eyes and if it looks good I roll with it But I think thats relative to the type of images I make/prefer.

[xpatUSA]

Couldn't resist:

FastStone Viewer, always good for quick and dirty stuff.

The adjustments:



Pardon me for changing the hue to get the foliage a bit more golden.

Then I applied two-stage sharpening for local contrast, 2.7px and amount = 7, followed by 0.3px and amount = 23. The final result was well over the top to my poor old eyes:

The histogram, that's another thing I rarely use . . .

Matt, you did notice that I was talking about a saturation histogram not the regular RGB kind?

[IzzieK]

After all the good advice you had already received, let me just welcome you here at CiC. I hope you enjoy your time with us.

[Ynez]

Wow! Thank you all for this discussion and information . I have a page of notes and will return to my image to explore these edits. This is exactly what I was looking for. I’m off to practice and learn, but I will definitely be back. Cheers - Ynez

[MrB]

The edits here all seem to have taken the colours too far for me - I think the image needs more subtle adjustment. For the image from Post #1, the saturation and brightness were slightly reduced, then local contrast and a gentle contrast curve applied. This was followed by some sharpening and a few fine adjustments to brightness and saturation. The little bit of sky and hill at the top right were then adjusted separately for brightness, contrast and saturation, to bring out some detail there.



(Click the image to view in Lytebox)

Cheers.
Philip

[Manfred M]

The edits here all seem to have taken the colours too far for me - I think the image needs more subtle adjustment. For the image from Post #1, the saturation and brightness were slightly reduced, then local contrast and a gentle contrast curve applied. This was followed by some sharpening and a few fine adjustments to brightness and saturation. The little bit of sky and hill at the top right were then adjusted separately for brightness, contrast and saturation, to bring out some detail there.

We had an unusually warm fall in this part of the world and the colours were not nearly as bright and colourful as usual. Even this year the fall colours were brighter than this version.

Cheers.
Philip

I don't know Philip. The typical Eastern North American fall has absolutely brilliant and blazing colours. I don't know where Ynez took the shot so can't comment for sure as to how the scene would have looked.

I can certainly guarantee that the colours we usually get are nowhere near as dull as you show in your edit.

[Ynez]

I came back to post my changes and although I like Philip's edit you are right Manfred the colors were very bright. The picture was taken in Alaska this September during our 2-week fall season.

[Manfred M]

I came back to post my changes and although I like Philip's edit you are right Manfred the colors were very bright. The picture was taken in Alaska this September during our 2-week fall season.

Thanks Ynez - I've been to the north a few times (not to Alaska, but to Northern British Columbia, not far from the border with Alaska (Prince Rupert, Prince George and Haida Gwaii) and to Yellowknife in the North-West Territories (in September) but have not experienced fall there. My recollection of my reasonably frequent travel in Western Canada was that the leaf colours were quite brilliant there too, but the colours were primarily yellow and the brilliant oranges and reds we have in the East are not seen there.

My daughter, who lived in Japan for about 2-1/2 years says they had red fall colours as well, but again not as brilliant as the ones at home. I understand that the tree species, soil conditions and climate all play a part in the colours and brilliance of the foliage.

With regards to your latest edit, it is an improvement over your initial one (much better contrast), but I find you are still quite conservative in your PP work

[xpatUSA]

Thanks Ynez - I've been to the north a few times (not to Alaska, but to Northern British Columbia, not far from the border with Alaska (Prince Rupert, Prince George and Haida Gwaii) and to Yellowknife in the North-West Territories (in September) but have not experienced fall there. My recollection of my reasonably frequent travel in Western Canada was that the leaf colours were quite brilliant there too, but the colours were primarily yellow and the brilliant oranges and reds we have in the East are not seen there.

I remember driving up from Crowsnest to meet Route 1 near Banff and the colors were just beginning to show. Bright and spectacular, as has been said. Must dig out the snaps sometime . . .