There are times when we like to have strong, saturated colors. Most digital cameras allow us to do that by setting the color saturation parameter to ‘Vivid’.
But what if you, for whatever reason, had not done that and decide later on that you need saturated colors? We all know that there are many ways to boost the color saturation in Photoshop. Here is a simple, but very effective method to do just that.
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1. Open the image in Photoshop. For this learning, I am using Photoshop CS4. Make an adjustment layer for Channel Mixer. Tip: Start with an image that is not likely to look garish and unnatural after following the procedure.
2. Select Red from the Output Channel. Move the Red slider to 150 percent. Move the Green and Blue sliders to -25 percent (the idea is to keep the total at 100 percent).
3. Drop down to the Green channel and boost its saturation to 150 percent. This time move the remaining two sliders (Red and Blue) to -25 percent.
4. Repeat the procedure for the Blue channel. Here, move the Blue to 150 percent and move the Red and Green to -25 percent.(You do not have to stick to 150 percent. Experiment to fi nd the right percentage for your own subject. Remember, whatever percentage you use for a channel, the other two channels must each get half that amount in the minus direction)
5. At this point, the Layers dialog box will show a white mask. Invert this mask (Ctrl+I) to make it black. This hides the saturation you have applied.
6. With white as the foreground color, use a suitable soft Brush to paint over the areas you like to ‘pop-up’. Vary the opacity of the brush to your requirement.
Tip:
Start painting using a lower Opacity (say 30 percent). If you want a stronger ‘pop-up’, increase the opacity or re-paint over the already painted area.
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Note
1. Be very careful if your photo has human beings in it, because the skin tones can get garish. If there are people in the photo, do not paint over the skin tones in point number 6 above.
2. If possible, start with a RAW fi le and work in 16-bit mode. This will ensure minimum losses in image quality.
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Final Image
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