How to make colors more vibrant?

[Punta Cana Bride]

I am a newbie here and probably have absolutely no idea on how to take a good picture yet, but I am working on it. These pictures below were taken in Dominican - Punta Cana During my wedding week. I have a few really great ones (to me anyways), and I was wondering if anyone can tell me how to fix them up to be a little more vibrant. I have Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 and Photoshop.

Maybe if you could fix them up a little yourself and advise how you did it, that would be great.:lol:

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r146/Lindsay_1979/vacationMay2008166.jpg
http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r146/Lindsay_1979/Wedding05-15-2008454.jpg

[mantra]

i think you should write with short fonts :D


well you can use software like lightroom or bibble they have a Vibrance feature to make more exciting colors or raw therapee(has a feature to boot the colors and it's free) , or lightzone other software with vibrance and a good contrast tool

and maybe use is enough a S curve in with photoshop

like this
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2121/vacationmay2008166rf5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2121/vacationmay2008166rf5.accd2c23d0.jpg (http://g.imageshack.us/g.php?h=378&i=vacationmay2008166rf5.jpg)

[PhotosGuy]

I am a... ... shouter? Please don't.

You can change the Saturation in PS but don't expect that the colors you will see will print well.

[Apone]

i think you should write with short fonts :D


well you can use software like lightroom or bibble they have a Vibrance feature to make more exciting colors or raw therapee(has a feature to boot the colors and it's free) , or lightzone other software with vibrance and a good contrast tool

and maybe use is enough a S curve in with photoshop

like this
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2121/vacationmay2008166rf5.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
http://img378.imageshack.us/img378/2121/vacationmay2008166rf5.accd2c23d0.jpg (http://g.imageshack.us/g.php?h=378&i=vacationmay2008166rf5.jpg)
Even though this made the colors darker, it's not the actual colors of the beach in the Dominican Republic. The original picture is of course accurate. Changing curves does more than enhance the original colors, it shifts them correct?

[tamcrochet]

I like both photos, but the second one needs to loose the artificial light source. Don't think you can do that in photoshop.
Shouting is in all caps, and some like me have a hard time reading small print. I will occasionally forget to reset my font size when blogging. It happens.
Like the photos. The original beach was too washed out but to me the changes are a little too brown, I would go a little less in that area. I haven't been to that beach so I don't know what color the sand really was. Different beaches have different sand colors based on the geography of the area.
Just my opinion.

[Jryan]

You could kill the light in PS, I did one real quick, just take more time and more detail and it could come out very nicely. Or have someone better than me do it! :D

[Ryan W]

This is what I'd do ...

In lightroom ... tiny bit of exposure, blacks, vibrance, saturation, luminance and single colour saturation.

[Ryan W]

Sorry the quality i bad ... I CBA to fix it though.

[blinded]

Here you go. I tried to get the image to look as natural as possible (well as natural as post processing will allow). I like to perform invisible editing, where you can't tell an image has been edited unless you see the original. In some of the other pictures, it seems that there was too much overall saturation.

http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/6497/puntaeditedkv7.jpg

Wanna know some more of how I did the image? I split it up into 3 parts: sky, forground (to the black line that starts the sky), and sand. I didn't really fuss over any blending or the most accurate selections, since there was no fine detail (though the sand could be a bit better). I colored sections with hue/saturation and applied contrast with curves. For the sky, I added more blue and cyan then did curves, the general foreground I improved contrast only, and for the sand, I took out a lot of saturation, since it looks really gaudy and way too orange. I did curves to it to so that it had that "white sand" look. If you want I can post an image of the layers and some settings I used.

[Punta Cana Bride]

Thanks for all your comments and help with my pics everyone. One of the pp's was right in the fact that I was not shouting, but just writing my words a little bigger so I could read them better. Sorry if it seemed I was shouting.

Blinded - Your post is exactly what I was looking for. Would you mind posting the image of the layers and some settings you used? That would help me out a great deal.

One other question. If I wanted to make the color of someone's shirt a little brighter but keep all the other colors the same, how would I do that? Is there a tutorial somewhere on here that would help me with that?

[blinded]

Blinded - Your post is exactly what I was looking for. Would you mind posting the image of the layers and some settings you used? That would help me out a great deal.
Posting them all here will be too big, so here are the thumbnails (all will fit into the next post, not this one though). Click to see the full size image then. (layers| sky select | sky hue/sat | sky curves |etc)
http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/2481/layersan4.jpg
By endit (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/endit) at 2008-06-14



One other question. If I wanted to make the color of someone's shirt a little brighter but keep all the other colors the same, how would I do that? Is there a tutorial somewhere on here that would help me with that?

You can make a selection of the shirt and then use Hue/Saturation, changing the "master" luminosity, or change the luminosity of the color you want to change (IE you have a red shirt with blue on it and only want to change the red, just change the red luminosity). I like to do everything as adjustment layers, that way you can change the effect or use blending after.

[blinded]

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/7149/skyselectjl9.th.jpg (http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skyselectjl9.jpg)http://img160.imageshack.us/img160/4569/skyhuesatuf6.th.jpg (http://img160.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skyhuesatuf6.jpg)http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/4217/skycurveai7.th.jpg (http://img248.imageshack.us/my.php?image=skycurveai7.jpg)
http://img106.imageshack.us/img106/8008/waterselectts1.th.jpg (http://img106.imageshack.us/my.php?image=waterselectts1.jpg)http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/9027/watercurvery0.th.jpg (http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=watercurvery0.jpg)
http://img212.imageshack.us/img212/3427/sandselectjv0.th.jpg (http://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sandselectjv0.jpg)http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/7795/sandhuesatls1.th.jpg (http://img260.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sandhuesatls1.jpg)http://img375.imageshack.us/img375/7590/sandcurveor0.th.jpg (http://img375.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sandcurveor0.jpg)

[tamcrochet]

Removing the light looks better the only other thing I would suggest is to remove the over exposed tree trunk or clone another trunk to replace it to keep a balanced picture. Wow the last beach looks great. Can't wait till I am better at post processing the photos.

[Punta Cana Bride]

Thank you so much blinded for your step by step instructions. This has really helped me out alot. I still will need a lot of practise with this stuff but thanks for helping me on my way.:D