How to get the most rich, deep colors

I'm new to photography so this is probably a dumb question. When I look at my

pictures and then look at the pictures of other people mine always seem very

washed out. The colors are no where near as vivid and engaging.

 

Is this caused by: the way I shoot, what I shoot, that fact that I don't post

process the images with photoshop, all of the above?

There isn't much detail in your question, but I think you're talking about contrast and saturation. If you have a digital camera you might want to adjust the default settings, or possibly pick a "picture style" like my 5D's "Landscape" that does it for you. Or you just might need to bump up the contrast and saturation a little.

Probably all of the above on one level or another, but what are you shooting with and how are you shooting with it? There is a post process that occurs to get the most bang for your buck. do you have Photoshop? Or something thereof?

Photoshop is the reason why. A few clicks in photoshops levels tool can make your image pop and get you the rigth white balance. Then add a 3 pass sharpening and youve got a prof. looking image. Easy to learn if you have pS.

Make sure you have your camera Work Space set to sRGB instead of RGB. Otherwise increase the Saturation Level on your picture style settings.

On the other hand, your photos might be natural while the others are horrendously oversaturated. Try adding a little bit of extra contrast and saturation using suitable software. But I do mean a little. Usually 5% extra saturation is maximum otherwise you can get problems with false colours. Another trick worth trying is Unsharp Mask around 20% and 50 radius.

 

If you are printing direct from the camera try adjusting the camera contrast and saturation settings. Probably somewhere under Menu. But once again, don't overdo it.

As others have said, more detail about how and what you shoot would help. Could you post some examples? Someone would likely take a sample and process it to see what is possible.

 

My advice would be to shoot Raw to get all the information possible to start; use a good Raw processor; make sure your monitor is calibrated; play with a good editing program like a version of Photoshop, or Paint Shop Pro, or Picture Window Pro to learn how to enhance contrast, saturation, and sharpness until you are satisfied. Do everything in 16 bit as long as you can. Make sure your web stuff is in sRGB in the end.

 

Don't over do it.

 

Don't do too little.

 

Make it just right.

I think the more-important question is: do you feel your prints represent what you want them to?

 

Personally, I HATE the grossly oversaturated images so many people create.

Thanks to all of you for trying to help, sorry I didn't provide enough info. First I'm shooting with a Nikon D100. I use the following lenses:<br>

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28-105mm 1:3.5-4.5D Quantaray<br>

105mm 1:2.8 DG Macro EX Sigma<br>

70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6G AF-S Nikkor<br>

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I also have a Quantaray 2x teleconverter which I'm playing with occasionally.<br>

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I typically shoot with the 28-105mm lens because I'm still learning and I find that lens the easiest to use. I mostly shoot hand held, although I am starting to try to force myself to shoot from a tripod more lately. I haven't been shooting raw format I've been using the large fine JPEG setting. ISO 200 and color mode I sRGB but I should probably be using color mode III sRGB.<br>

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One thing that makes the entire process more difficult is that I'm color blind making telling what I should be seeing somewhat difficult.<br>

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If you look at <a href="http://www.photo.net/photos/zparticle">my gallery</a> there is a single picture under the folder lanscape which demonstrates my problem. The scene just doesn't have any pop to it, I feel like the colors should be highly saturated. The same thing is true for the macro picture of the flower.<br>

<br>

Thanks again everyone.

I don't see much wrong with them.

 

I played with your flower. What do you think?<div></div>

Wow that makes a difference. Is that done with a sharpening filter in PhotoShop? The colors still look pale to me though. I think I'm just worrying too much about it.

Here are 2 different samples of the one landscape image that I have played around with. personally I felt that this image is better represented as more desaturated because of the winter season and the fact that there are old rusty trucks in the photo, it kind of gives me that old neglected feeling and the desaturated look really appeals to me more than if this were more saturated. I also threw in a more saturated variation just to show you how it can pop. What do you think?<div></div>

Now here is the Saturated one:<div></div>

Scott, here is another version. All I did was to adjust the histogram and add LCE (local contrast enhancement).

Hmmm...looked more vivid before it was on the forum.

 

Scott, look at your histograms. The flower photo looks a little underexposed. If you slide the right slider a little to the left to where the majority of the pixels begin, then move the middle slider over a little, it looks great!

Playing with selective colors.

Sean, I see what you mean by not having the saturated colors making more sense for the subject of the picture. Now that I see the colors popped out like that I don't really care for it.

 

Diane, I'm going to spend some time learning how to read the histogram and adjust it.

 

Jammer, what exactly are doing in that change?

 

Once again, thanks to all of you for taking the time to help me out. So much to learn. :)

Here's a pretty good histogram article.

 

http://www.popphoto.com/howto/2180/d-slr-workshop-understanding-histograms.html

Scott,<br>

With Photoshop and I assume any good photo editing software, you have the ability to go into individual colors and tweek them to your liking. So, I went in and tweeked the yellows, greens and reds until I saw what "I" liked. It's one of my favorite tools in PS.