A question of color

Hello all,

Here and other places in the web I see photos with brilliant and vivid colors, mine look a bit dull and watered down. So the question is how one can make photos with such full-of-life colors. I cranked up the settings in the 300D, I believe it’s +1 sharpness, +2 saturation without much difference. All are jpegs and rarely do any post processing (with ACDsee Fotoconvace). Unfortunately I don’t have any photos in the net so I can’t shaw an example.

Any suggestion will be highly appreciated.

I will assume nothing is wrong with your camera - if you want more vivid colors, you will have to start doing post processing. Fiddle with contrast, saturation and/or some filters and knock it up to your liking.

Yes.. I agree.. The built in camera processing doesn't hold a candle to a decent phot editing package where you can adjust your colours from very bright to downright unnatural.. I keep all my camera setting neutral and use post processing to adjust to my liking...

Get photoshop le or elements and do more post processing...a necessary evil...but worth the time.

First of all, what kind of pictures do you usually take? In the reality, colors are usually mixed-grey. It is hard to find pure, saturated colors in the real life. And Canon equipment is famous for its ability to reproduce colors accurately. Brain can trick the eyes, and we can "see" what is actually not there. The camera captures the reality. If one wants to get beautiful pictures he has to find the right light, the right subject and expose correctly.

Second, probably, the majority of really beautiful pictures that you see on the web have been post-processed. Photoshop can help to "fix" the reality a little bit. Still, the light and the exposure are much more important.

Having said all that, I actually think that the 300D at its default setting usually produces more saturated pictures. I shoot RAW, and I can see it by comparing embedded jpegs with files coming out from RAW conversion.

I find that adding too much saturation at once in Photoshop can produce colour artifacts.
What I do is make an action where you increase saturation by 5%.
Then, just play the action over and over until you get the saturation you like.
For some reason adding to the saturation in increments like this allows you to add much more saturation before artifacts appear.

You might also want to search this forum and google for "velvia" plugins.
They might be exactly what you need.

This is an extreme example.

Unprocessed Raw:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

I'm sure you knew this already, but I'll say it just for the sake of completeness. I often have trouble following my own advice.

It also helps to shoot in better light. In direct midday sunshine, colours will usually be bland and uninteresting, whereas shooting at sunrise or sunset, or under overcast skies, will give more saturated colors naturally, without post-processing (which still won't hurt though...).

If you have Photoshop, try this:

1. Create a duplicate of your master (background) layer
2. Saturate the heck out of this new layer; Image-->Adjustments-->Hue/Sat; something over +65; experiment, but the more the better
3. Change the blend mode on the new layer to Color
4. Use the Opacity slider to control the color intensity

When you have something you like save copies of the file as PSD (you're working original) and JPG (completed original).

Great tip Whowie!

That method gives great colour without losing detail in highly saturated areas.
Thanks alot