Photoshop: Autumn Images: Page 2

BOOSTING HUES
Vibrant hues are what we have come to expect from photos captured in autumn, but sometimes the strength of the colours in our photos do not live up to our expectations. Fortunately, there are several controls in Photoshop, Elements and ACR that can help boost the colour in pictures.

STEP 1
The Saturation slider found in the Basic panel of Adobe Camera Raw or the Hue/Saturation control in both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is used to control the strength of the colours in the photo. Dragging the slider to the right boosts all the colours, increasing their vividness. This control needs to be used carefully, as all hues are affected.

STEP 2
You can increase the strength of your picture’s colours with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, before masking associated areas to modify how the saturation changes affect specific picture parts. Select the mask thumbnail and choose a soft-edged black brush with a low opacity. Paint over the areas where you want to reduce the saturation.

The key to successful saturation-based colour-boosting is about customising the changes with a layer mask.

STEP 3
The Vibrance slider is a new feature in ACR for Photoshop and Elements. Vibrance also boosts colours, but unlike the Saturation control, it concentrates its changes on the desaturated hues in the photo and offers some protection for skin tones.

If you are working with Raw files then using the Vibrance control can be more successful due to its selectivity than simple saturation changes.

STEP 4
Alternatively, you can select which colours to boost individually with the sliders in the HSL/Grayscale panel of ACR. Here, the colour in our photo is broken into eight categories rather than three (red, green and blue). After selecting the Saturation tab from the top of the panel you can selectively control the strength of any of these colours, providing the opportunity to boost some hues while protecting others.