Enhancing Rainbows

[meddler]

I caught a rainbow on the move. Im fairly happy with the colours of

the sky but I cant seem to get the rainbow to stand out more. Do you

have any suggestions/techniques that I could try.<br><br>

 

Here it is <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?

photo_id=2701335">http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?

photo_id=2701335</a>

<br><br>

My editing software of choice is The Gimp, but Im sure I could

translate photoshop techniques or to it if you can suggest something

[beauh44]

Hi Paulo, This is a Photoshop trick for bumping up saturation; I know little about The Gimp, but I think it'll work fine: 1) Duplicate the layer; 2) Bump up the saturation pretty strong; it'll look a bit funky but we'll fix it... 3) Gaussian blur the saturated layer - somewhere around 8-10 pixels 4) Change the blend mode to color.

 

Of course, this'll saturate everything else too, so you may need to mask out the parts you don't want so saturated. This works on some images - fall foliage is great - but YMMV.

 

You might want to dodge and burn a bit too - dodge the rainbow and burn the cornfield a bit. Nice shot!

[meddler]

Thanks Beau I'll give it a try

[beauh44]

I took a 5 minute stab at it... I remembered another trick and used that too: 1) Go to channels 2) Select the Green channel and copy it to the clipboard 3) Go back to layer view and make a new, empty layer 4) Paste the green channel into the empty layer (everything will turn to B&W 5) Set the blend mode to "Soft Light". I don't know if this is preferable, but you might be able to see the rainbow a little better. Good luck!<div></div>

[sheldonnalos]

Here's my 5 minute stab at it in PS 5.0 LE ...

 

Created a duplicate layer, then created a layer mask for the second layer. I then used the paintbrush to paint the whole mask area black except for where the rainbow was (it remained white). I changed the blending mode to overlay, and played with the hue/saturation sliders to bump up the saturation on the duplicate layer a fair amount (since only the rainbow is affected). I also bumped saturation up on the base layer too. I may have overdone it, but you could use the opacity slider to back off the effect a little.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Sheldon<div></div>

[meddler]

Thanks guys, here is my attempt. Perhaps the sky is a little too blue, but it certainly makes the original look dull by comparison. Useful techniques thanks.<br><br>

 

<a href="http://www.photo.net/photo/2709742">http://www.photo.net/photo/2709742</a>