How to achieve the color be rich and solid

[once2work]

Please help me to achieve the solid and rich color show in the following photos.

My workflow with Lightroom 2.6, Photoshop CS3, plug-in: Nik Color Efex Pro 3, Viveza, Sharpener Pro 3 and Dfine 2.
I tried all these software seems to be can’t achieve the color like the attached photos.

Please give me some advice how to produce the rich and solid color I’ll be much appreciate.

Thank you,
Paul

[Jonathan Wienke]

The first priority with any color issue is to make sure your monitor and printer are properly profiled and calibrated. If you cannot  trust the accuracy of the colors you see on screen, everything else is a complete waste of time. There are many calibration devices available, browse through the color management forum and you'll find a great deal of information regarding the capabilities of various devices. You'll also want to look into getting a Color Checker and the Passport software so you can profile your camera, and tweak its color palette creatively if you wish.

[PeterAit]

Please help me to achieve the solid and rich color show in the following photos.

My workflow with Lightroom 2.6, Photoshop CS3, plug-in: Nik Color Efex Pro 3, Viveza, Sharpener Pro 3 and Dfine 2.
I tried all these software seems to be can’t achieve the color like the attached photos.

Please give me some advice how to produce the rich and solid color I’ll be much appreciate.

Thank you,
Paul

Maybe your subjects aren't that colorful? But seriously, you can try nudging the saturation up a wee bit.

[once2work]

The first priority with any color issue is to make sure your monitor and printer are properly profiled and calibrated. If you cannot  trust the accuracy of the colors you see on screen, everything else is a complete waste of time. There are many calibration devices available, browse through the color management forum and you'll find a great deal of information regarding the capabilities of various devices. You'll also want to look into getting a Color Checker and the Passport software so you can profile your camera, and tweak its color palette creatively if you wish.

MMy Mac being calibrated with Spyder2Express every two month, and I order color prints from the custom lab and the color it is match with my monitor. My question is, these photograph how he saturate the color. I had tried with my photograph with similar environment in LR and ACR push with the Vibrance, adjust the Hue/Saturation/Lights in the Photoshop CS3, cant achieve the same result as these photos, that's why I'm seeking advice from.

[once2work]

Maybe your subjects aren't that colorful? But seriously, you can try nudging the saturation up a wee bit.

I'm doing the same kind of photography as this guy doing and photograph under the similar situation as the people's wearing as well the similar background. From his picture under the flash, I believe he set +1 on the flash to achieve the slightly overexpose on the face to washout a little bit of the detail on the face. From the EXIF show, it was taken with a Canon mk2 mated with the 24-70 F2.8L, post processing with PS on a PC, sure, any plug-in that it don't show.

[once2work]

I just have a though, if I adjust the saturation to +3 or +4 in my Canon camera's picture style, would it help but I'm shooting RAW?

[once2work]

The only settings that affect RAW are the ISO, shutter speed, aperture and long exposure noise reduction, the rest of the camera settings (saturation, sharpening, etc) do not.

Some user camera settings (tags for manufacturer's software) such as high ISO noise reduction are honoured by the manufacturer's RAW software (DPP, Nikon Capture) but not fixed.

Hi Nick,
Thanks for the prompt reply, as mentioned, if I jack-up the saturation in the camera picture style in Canon when shooting RAW, it don't help to saturate the color. And I correct. Thanks!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... if I adjust the saturation to +3 or +4 in my Canon camera's picture style, would it help but I'm shooting RAW?

No, it will not help.... adjusting saturation in Canon's Picture Style affects jpegs only and how picture appears on the camera's preview screen.

Also, in Canon's DPP it will affect the initial preview of the image (i.e., it would show the image to be more saturated than default settings). In DPP, it displays the image with the Saturation slider already moved to match what you set in the Picture Style.

In LR and ACR, images would be initially displayed according to "Adobe Standard" setting, i.e., regardless of the setting you chose in Picture Styles (though you could access Canon's default Picture Styles in the Camera Calibration menu... but you can not access user defined Picture Styles).

It would help if you would post some of your photographs where you can not achieve the desired level of saturation, so that we can see if there is something else that might be preventing it.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

If you would post one or a few of your RAW images that you need help with would be helpful.

A short suggestion, try "general - punch" preset in Lightroom. Also I wouldn't mess with a lot of stuff. There is an advantage to use one tool at a time and learn to use it well.

Check also that you are using color profiles correctly. Lightroom uses Prophoto RGB, would you have an unprofiled conversion to sRGB or AdobeRGB in your workflow your colors would go bad.

Best regards
Erik

Please help me to achieve the solid and rich color show in the following photos.

My workflow with Lightroom 2.6, Photoshop CS3, plug-in: Nik Color Efex Pro 3, Viveza, Sharpener Pro 3 and Dfine 2.
I tried all these software seems to be can’t achieve the color like the attached photos.

Please give me some advice how to produce the rich and solid color I’ll be much appreciate.

Thank you,
Paul

[Pete Berry]

Paul, from looking at your blogspot galleries, you are far from the beginner photographer that I assumed in your first post, with a range from the very subtle to the vibrant, saturated images you seek for wedding photography - with commercial work and even a magazine cover - quite impressive! For me, a somewhat advanced amateur, the subtle is far more difficult, and what's easy is to push color channels to the point of clipping, or beyond for graphic, punchy images, preserving skin tones with masking, selection, etc..

Since you have all the software tools, and obviously know how to use them, I am confused by your apparent difficulties, as your own wedding portfolio samples show the whole range from subtle to vibrant also.

As suggested before, samples of your problem images similar to the other photog's samples would be helpful.

Pete

[tokengirl]

As suggested before, samples of your problem images similar to the other photog's samples would be helpful.

What he said.  In order to help you get where you want, we first need to know where you're coming from.  Some unretouched photos will help us help you.

[Pete Berry]

Please help me to achieve the solid and rich color show in the following photos.

Please give me some advice how to produce the rich and solid color I’ll be much appreciate.

Thank you,
Paul

OK - I took a look at those in PS's histogram. The photog gets the look by oversaturating (blowing out) the colors - particularly the reds - so that detail and separation of shades are lost. Granted, this gives a rich and solid look, but also a very artificial one, best seen in examples 1 and 3. Most would consider this poor post-processing technique, I believe, rather than a look to be copied. Your own work impresses me much more!

Pete

[once2work]

[

Paul, from looking at your blogspot galleries, you are far from the beginner photographer that I assumed in your first post, with a range from the very subtle to the vibrant, saturated images you seek for wedding photography - with commercial work and even a magazine cover - quite impressive! For me, a somewhat advanced amateur,

Hi Peter,
You're correct, I'm not a new-hand to professional photography and I was from the film day photographer and receive my photography education in North America then work in the catalog studio in New York with 8 x 10 camera before return to Asia decade ago. I’m totally enjoy digital photography today that the technical wouldn’t be restricted like films, only our creativity limited by us, it make me immerse in the digital post processing and I can sit in front of my Mac for couple days just experimenting color and invent the look.
I’m dissolve from my advertising photography because those young art director not favor to talk to a old photographer (may be for Asia), I’m not interest to talk to the kid either, so I’m more focus into the wedding photography business now-a-day and become my core business, I’m doing fine but due to the recession, it became very competitive this year and this guy’s style seems to well received in the market here it make me nervures, and be frank, I lost my direction as well my confidence show on the decrees booking, it may because of the recession and nothing to do with my photography that I didn’t know, that’s I’m thinking of reprocess some of my photo into that style to post on my blog for pitch.

OK - I took a look at those in PS's histogram. The photog gets the look by oversaturating (blowing out) the colors - particularly the reds - so that detail and separation of shades are lost. Granted, this gives a rich and solid look, but also a very artificial one, best seen in examples 1 and 3. Most would consider this poor post-processing technique, I believe, rather than a look to be copied. Your own work impresses me much more!

Pete

Thank you for your nice word and you help me to regain my confident, as I stated above, do you have some direction for me to enforce some area of my adjustment in LR or PS in order to achieve those look. As you said, I should not follow, but I want to know how.

I sincerely appreciate for you to spend time to look into my issue.

Sincerely
Paul

[Pete Berry]

[
Hi Peter,
You're correct, I'm not a new-hand to professional photography and I was from the film day photographer and receive my photography education in North America then work in the catalog studio in New York with 8 x 10 camera before return to Asia decade ago. I’m totally enjoy digital photography today that the technical wouldn’t be restricted like films, only our creativity limited by us, it make me immerse in the digital post processing and I can sit in front of my Mac for couple days just experimenting color and invent the look.
I’m dissolve from my advertising photography because those young art director not favor to talk to a old photographer (may be for Asia), I’m not interest to talk to the kid either, so I’m more focus into the wedding photography business now-a-day and become my core business, I’m doing fine but due to the recession, it became very competitive this year and this guy’s style seems to well received in the market here it make me nervures, and be frank, I lost my direction as well my confidence show on the decrees booking, it may because of the recession and nothing to do with my photography that I didn’t know, that’s I’m thinking of reprocess some of my photo into that style to post on my blog for pitch.



Thank you for your nice word and you help me to regain my confident, as I stated above, do you have some direction for me to enforce some area of my adjustment in LR or PS in order to achieve those look. As you said, I should not follow, but I want to know how.

I sincerely appreciate for you to spend time to look into my issue.

Sincerely
Paul

Thanks, Paul. The young don't seem to know what to do with us older guys, and vice versa. And a flashy new look in wedding photography may be what the young couples want now.

I think what the photographer has done is to isolate the all-important skin tones in one adjustment layer, then saturate the heck out of the red channel, with or without a general saturation increase, in another - to the point of further saturation increases having mimimal effect on the blazing reds. Decreasing the red or general sat. a bit, on the other hand, has a dramatic effect in reducing the visual impact as well as the red clipping.

Pete

[hsmeets]

....and this guy’s style seems to well received in the market here it make me nervures, and be frank, I lost my direction as well my confidence show on the decrees booking, it may because of the recession and nothing to do with my photography that I didn’t know, that’s I’m thinking of reprocess some of my photo into that style to post on my blog for pitch.

I's all about taste and fashion. It would not surprise me that in a few years from now the soft focus, dreamy, pastel-tinted photographs of the 70'ies will be back en-voque again, just as a few years back a wedding was printed in black&white/sepia toned (here in europe)....

As previous poster(s) wrote: probably a mask to prevent skin tones to go out of wack and jacked up saturation.

[Peter_DL]

In Photoshop, a Saturation Mask can be used to focus and limit saturation enhancement to those colors which are already saturated by nature.
Seems to match above "picture style".

Peter

--

[once2work]

In Photoshop, a Saturation Mask can be used to focus and limit saturation enhancement to those colors which are already saturated by nature.
Seems to match above "picture style".

Hi Peter,
Thank you so much for your input.

Would it be possible for you to guide me in more detail on this function.

Many thanks.

Paul

[Peter_DL]

There are different ways to create a Saturation Mask. One approach is described here.
Another procedure is to extract saturation to grayscale by means of the Selective Color tool.
To go into detail:

/> process your Raw file to a somewhat normal look, less saturated and maybe a bit contrasty.
/> convert and save the file to a small(er) working space such as Adobe RGB or sRGB. This is not mandatory but it may make sense at this stage. Whereas in a large gamut this whole idea to boost saturation of saturated colors is prone result in "imaginary colors". (I guess that’s one reason why we have Vibrance, because it operates the other way round).
/> in Photoshop, create a Selective Color adjustment layer. Set the Blacks as described in above link.
/> Strg + click on the RGB composite channel to select everything visible.
/> Delete the Selective Color layer (while the selection stays active).
/> Add a Hue/Sat.- adjustment layer in Saturation blend mode. It will now carry the selection as a layer mask. Raise the Saturation slider up to e.g. +25.
Alternatively, the Channel Mixer is often recommended as well to add saturation in visually pleasing way.
Further to be applied on the mask:
/> Tweak the tonality of the mask e.g. by brightening it a bit by means of the Levels’ midtone slider.
/> apply a Gaussian blur of some few pixel width.
Finally, reduce Opacity of the Hue/Sat.-layer depending on needs (take care about posterization).

Just takes a few minutes to record this as an Action.
Hope it meets your desired look.

Peter

__

[thierrylegros396]

A very effective method I use in a few cases for some landscapes is to slightly decrease (-9 to -20) the orange, yellow and green luminance AND increase (+5 to +30) the saturation of the same colors in Lightroom.

That method also works with washed skies (blue slider), if they are not completely white of course !

You can combine the method with a slight increase of vibrance.

Have a Nice Day !

Thierry