How to get rich colors w/o over saturating??

[jocelynaz]

I love, love, love the rich, vibrant colors of these two photographers. I know how to saturate, increase curves/contrast, and am fairly knowledgeable at changing the colors of objects. I also just learned about Vibrance in CS4 (downloaded CS4 trial last week). But how do you get such rich colors without it having the subjects and overall colors looking over blown or overly saturated?? I'm sure masks are involved -- and I've tried it on my end, but still not getting the look. I'm not sure what I'm missing here.

Can someone direct me to a good tutorial on this?

Brianna Graham Photography - Flickr image
a day at the office » Simplicity Photography

[edbayani]

in my experience, good exposure, position of lights and sometimes i use a polarizing filter to reduce the glare on the subject.

[lputman]

I sent you a PM.

[jocelynaz]

Thank you edbayani and Lori!

Ed--Where in PI are you from? My parents are there right now visiting family. They're going back and forth from Manila to Dasol and I was born in Olongapo. Haven't been back to PI since '88 though.

[zona5101]

you can also selectively change saturation using channels in layers dialogue or using the drop down from Image -> adjustments then there are several tools to choose.

In a related note, when using LR you can select the color using an eyedroper then slide to increase or decrease that particular color/color group. You can change the hue, saturatiion and luminance that way.

[jocelynaz]

Thanks Zona!

I found some great tutorials on youtube last night utilizing hue/saturation. I realized I wasn't using this feature to its full potential!

Can you get similar rich, vibrant post process images (like what I linked to above) in Lightroom??

[LeeR]

Clearly both of the photographers you alluded to have found the vibrance slider and are making good use of it. But they are also doing other things to help them develop unique and recognizable styles. Brianna Graham appears to be overlaying colors in certain areas. Look at the image on her front page. The bottom half of the frame is super saturated while the top half has been desaturated and overlayed with an orange cast. I suspect she loved the colors that were happening in the foreground but not in the background so she emphasized what she liked and de-emphasized what she didn't.
Describing Angie Monson's techniques is a bit more difficult. She is an amazingly competent photographer who uses every trick in the book. She clearly loves color and loves to pick locatoins where she can feature some stunning color in the background. But she is also very, very good at lighting, which is no small feat in some of these situations.
So what is the take-away from all this? Master the tools for making the original image, and then master PS so that you can use that to begin developing your own style.

[edbayani]

jocelynaz, i;m from las pinas, in bf homes.
i knew you were a pinay from the photo you used in your avatar.

[hibou]

As evidenced by the replies there are clearly a ton of ways to achieve this sort of look. My personal guess is judicious use of Hard Light layer in photoshop.

[lonni]

Actions.

Got to Photoshop Actions & Filters {Get Totally Rad!} and download their free samples. The few thet give you are amazing and they are all toatally editable. The action will set up adjustment and layer masks for you and you can adjust teh fill and opacity and paint out sections to get the look you are after.

Fiddling with them will help you figure out how it works and you can start experimenting on your own.

You will love boutwell magic glasses. They also have a great site to showcase recepies for their actions that is inspiring.

You could check out kevin kubotas action kits, i use them and his hollywood actions are good.