Softball

[Sebastian]

[BLS439]

I like it. The colors are so saturated and vivid. It's a great wide anlge shot!

-Dave

[titantonic]

I love the sky. The activity going on beneath it could be just about anything or nothing at all and it would still be a nice photo.

[Sebastian]

Thanks guys.

[Ultra Magnus]

Great photo. What post processing have you done, or is this right out of the camera?

BM

[Sebastian]

I boosted the saturation overall, but I really went to work on the sky and the grass. I like to use the color range selection tool, select a color I want to boost and then use curves (drag down) on just that selection.

[livin4lax09]

nice. good PP. It's what makes great photos.

[Ultra Magnus]

Thanks for the info. I played with this technique all weekend and came up with some excellent results. I always wondered how this was done, now I have a grasp of adjustment layer masks!

BM

[Sebastian]

BM,

Post some of the shots! Another trick I use to saturate colors is to convert to LAB mode, select the "b" channel, and give it an s-curve. You just have to make sure to lock the mid tones at 0,0 or there will be a color shift. Also, an inverse s-curve will desaturate.

[Ultra Magnus]

GREEK!! CHINEESE!!! Arrrgggghhhh!!! Just when I think I understand, I am humbled! PS is such an amazing tool, one could use it for years and still learn new things.

I'll post a couple. Most of the shots I worked on over the weekend were just family photos for my wife's scrapbooking/creative memories stuff, nothing fancy, but now I'm looking for some better photos to mess with.

BM

[Ultra Magnus]

Here's a before an after shot of my daugter, doing the color range selection and curves layers. I greened up the grass, blued up her dress, and browned up the squirrel and the dirt.

[Sebastian]

BM,

It's really pretty simple. Just convert the image to LAB mode (image->mode) and then in the channels palette select the "b" channel, make the other channels visible by clicking on their eyes and use curves to boost or reduce the saturation.

[Sebastian]

Ha, you posted while I was making up my little tutorial there.

The changes are subtle but I think for the better. Keep playing with it. I think in this particular image the slight overexposure limits what you can do, the highlights are pretty bright, making more drastic changes harder.

[masdog]

Hmm...that's an interesting way of boosting the saturation. I didn't know you could do that.

I'll have to give this tip a try tomorrow. Thanks, Sebastian!!

[Sebastian]

LAB mode is one of the best way to adjust colors. I am just starting to mess with it, so don't be surprised if some of what I say changes as I learn more. There's a great book on the subject that I'm about to pick up:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032...Fencoding=UTF8

[Ultra Magnus]

Thanks. I'm going to try that tonight. Your right about being a bit overexposed. My wife requested that I make the shirt more pink but I just couldn't do it. Too blown out...

[Sebastian]

Yeah, I find that my Canon's meter likes to overexpose when there's dark grass in a large part of the image. Yet another thing to remind me why the handheld is the way to go.