Help with photograph, improvement on the colors

[NicoleBach]

Hi everyone,

This pic is up on my site. I wanted to know how to enhance the red color of the apples coz they sorta look old and dull.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

They look ok to me, but if you want them redder, try selectively changing the hue of red more toward magenta and away from orange. I say selectively, i.e., apples only, as you might have problems with faces otherwise. As a matter of fact, the faces already look a bit too red. To diminish that "old" look in apples, try enhancing yellow patches toward green and increase saturation. Also, play with Clarity slider a bit to see if that helps.

[David Sutton]

Adding to what Slobodan has said, I don't think the apples are the problem. They are competing with the white shirts directly behind them and also with the window on the right which has blown to white. You could try darkening down everything except the apples and perhaps adding some contrast to the apples. I've taken the liberty of doing this with a curve on the background and Nik Contrast on the apples (quick and dirty) and taking a white balance off the back of the laptop, I hope you don't mind. Is it heading in the direction you want to go?
David

[Schewe]

What applications are you using...the way to do it in Photoshop vs Lightroom are considerably different...

[Iluvmycam]

They look natural to me too.

[NicoleBach]

I am using PhotoShop.

 

What applications are you using...the way to do it in Photoshop vs Lightroom are considerably different...

[NicoleBach]

Actually looking at your edited version, I realized what the problem is. Thanks a lot! What I need to do is to definitely darken the background, without it being too much, since I do not want to take away the attention from the fact that it's a conference room, without changing the apples at all.

Sometimes solutions are simple and right in front of you, but continuously working with the same photograph tends to blind you to it.