Getting pics to pop

I am posting a couple of pics here. I am really impressed with the quality of the work that you guys do wiith your pictures. To me my pictures look kinda flat overall and don't really get that great color I see here often. Any tips would be great.

Here are 2 examples

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add Saturation maybe? and contrast?

• Added contrast via soft light curves adjustment layer. Opacity around 60%.
  
• Added selective colour adjustment layer to pop the greens and yellows a bit in the trees and tried to "correct" skin tone a bit... although I don't have a reference. Also used whites to try to neutralize the shirt a bit and darkened slightly to get some detail back.
  
• Copied the image to a new layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+N CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E) and applied a gausian blur to smoothen the background a bit.
  
• Copied the same image (pre-blur) to another layer and applied some sharpening. Then masked off the background as to not sharpen it.
  
• Resized to 400 wide and saved for web high quality.
  

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I think your images are good.... you just need to add some contrast.
Don't be disapointed with this starting point.

Does this help? Adjustment under photoshop 7 and hit auto color.

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Auto? What's that???

Here's the original picture with Auto Colour applied. First, it just tries to balance colour. Sometimes it works really well, most of the time I find the colours are still bland. This really depends on the picture.

Just doing that can't be enough. It obviously still lacks contrast and could use some sharpening.

Compare this image which is just Auto Coloured to the one I posted above with manual colour enhancement.
Also, check out those trees in the background. Isn't a nice gausian blur nice?

(I should mention I'm posting this image to show why I generally don't support using Auto... it's dull and bland)

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Very nice work everyone. Now I am going to try and simulate it myself

Now here is the real question...where did you learn to apply these techniques. Are there any books you would recommend

There are lots of books with lots of techniques. Also, there are web sites that try to explain one opinion or another.

When I first started shooting a DSLR, I simply shot a lot. I would try to post-process and "fix up" everything that I shot. Some I got right, and some I got wrong. I would print them up two on a sheet and show them to trusted friends for their opinions. Slowly, little by little, I got my eyeball calibrated to what others prefer. So, that had an effect on the degree that I attempt to "fix up" my shots.

If it gets to the point where somebody looks at it and says, "It looks like you Photoshopped this," then that means you are overdoing it.

---Bob Gross---

It really helps to start with good quality, and you have that...

photoshop cs is what I use... the main way I learned is by reading, playing, reading, playing...

like others have said contrast and saturation are the easiest settings to get that "pop"

I also did a unsharpen mask, and neat image www.neatimage.com/

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Sharpenning will also increases contrast.

. Make a selection around the subject, USM sharpen
. Inverse selection, gaussian blur the background by 1~2 pixels
. Deselect, use color balance to add some warmth to the whole picture
. Saturate the color more
. CONVERT color space to sRGB for web.

My attempt...

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Thanks for the help guys and I appreciate the compliments on the good starting point. I will keep playing with it. Everyone has been a big help

Whenever my pics need just a little more to "pop" so to speak, I give the picture a little local contrast enhancement, which is USM set for about 10-20% at a radius of 50-100. Play around with the settings until you get the look you are after. Here is a webpage that discusses this.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com …ontrast-enhancement.shtml

I guess I could have posted my pics without resizing. Nothing drives me nuts more than saving an image to find out it's 101KB and having to do another save to get it on here.

Anyway...

I rarely use the Hue/Saturation layer to boost colours. Sometimes I find you can overpower an image. If you only boost by a couple notches it should be alright. That's why I like the selective colour layer. Sometimes it seems that I'm the only one that uses it... I haven't seen anybody else recommend it. You can enhance each colour independently without spreading a colour cast on the entire image. I love it and use it all the time.

Does anybody know how to apply a gausian blur to an image using layers? Right now, I copy the visible image to a new layer twice. For one, I apply a gausian blur to the background to make it really smooth and mask off the subject. For the other one, I apply a smart sharpen or USM and mask off the background... leaving the sharpen on top.

It would be nice if you didn't have to copy the image to do that.
I know you can use the High Pass filter (I think) and change the blend mode to soft light to create sharpness (and can paint the layer with mid gray to leave un sharp) but don't know of a similar way to produce a blur.
Anybody have any ideas? If you don't have to copy the image first, you can go back and adjust your colour enhancements or touch ups without having to do the blur again.