which is your best tool to tune up colors

Hi photographers

often i open my photos , and i would like to change some colors on my photos , for example or boost the orange , or desaturate a specific range of colors , or simply tune up the colors of my photos

i would like to know your secrets

which is your best tool/software to improve, tune your photos colors

I'm liking Lightroom's targeted adjustment tools lately... no more guessing which sliders to move for a particular shade of color. (of course this is a global adjustment across the entire image.)

Adobe photoshop CS2 (and the recently released/still beta CS3) are, imo, the programs with the greatest level of control.

That level of control also makes the learning curve fairly steep, unfortunately.

rmford wrote in post #3313370
Adobe photoshop CS2 (and the recently released/still beta CS3) are, imo, the programs with the greatest level of control.

That level of control also makes the learning curve fairly steep, unfortunately.

Ummm CS3 is not beta.

heres my attack of photo
1. levels to get the white and black points set.
2. curves to balance the tones and contrast.
3. color balance to touch up what i dont like.
4. light/dark contrast thingy to up contrast and lighten a bit
5. perfect image haha
looks like alot but takes only a minute or two.

does somebody use DxO Optics Pro v4 ?

Hasn't been updated in a while, but this is the product I remember:
http://luminous-landscape.com/reviews/​mechanic.shtml

Best thing yuo can ever do for colours is get the WB right.

Once that's done then targeting single coulurs either in PhotoShop or Lightroom works great.

badfish wrote in post #3314449
Ummm CS3 is not beta.

Indeed - it released around 20 April. The first round of updates have already happened, including Camera Raw 4.1.

Camera Raw 4 has the same HSB tools as Lightroom - but without the same interactivity in their use. For that reason, I prefer making such global adjustments in Lightroom. (Lightroom will soon get the new features in Camera Raw 4.1).

David

Lightroom.

Lightroom

@davidw & badfish- yeah, i wasnt sure. Hence the slash.