Kick up the color, baby!

One of my favorite aspects of photography is post production. That is, enhancing photographs using editing software after they have been taken. And the cool thing about post production is that the techniques I’ll describe here work for photographs taken from any kind of camera! Have a digital SLR? Have a point and shoot? Have a film camera? No one misses out here.

Unless, of course, you don’t have a camera.

Canons are my weapon of choice. I have a couple of them. Oh and I just love to take a super photograph straight out of one of my cameras and kick it into high gear so that it becomes a super work of art.

To that end, I have a love affair with Photoshop. Egad, I know. Photoshop is pricey! So, for the average Joe, and even for the aspiring professional photographer, Photoshop Elements is really all that you or I might ever need or want. It comes with a much more palatable pricetag than straight up Photoshop, but has more than enough bells and whistles to help you get folks chiming and whistling about your photographs. Photoshop Elements works and looks very much like Photoshop, but it’s just a bit more of a layman’s software and is very easy to learn!

And, since a handful of you were wondering about aspects of my photographs that I happen to know I achieve post production, I thought I’d share a bit of the things I’ve stuffed up my sleeve about photography with you. I don’t know it all. Or even that much. But I have tinkered around with color a ton, so I’ll talk about that today. These tricks will be applicable for both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

I am going to start slow and easy, just sharing today a little technique for boosting color in your photographs.

I realize that many of you may not already own Photoshop, but many of these techniques can be applied to other editing software that perhaps you do have on your computer Perhaps, even if not, you will find it at least interesting. In a short time, I will begin posting more post production tricks that I employ, so if you want to get your hands on this great software, you’ll be ready for action when I post another lesson.

I am a color freak. I love color, lots of it. The more intense, the better. One of my favorite things to do with my photographs is to take them from SOOC (straight out of the camera) and boost the intensity of the hues, transforming the photographs into a kaleidoscope of color.

Today I’ll show you how to use Photoshop Elements (or Photoshop, or another software program that you might already have..I just happen to use and love Photoshop Elements and be rather well-versed with it.) to take your photos from this….

…to this…

Interested?

It’s easy, really! To do this with Photoshop, simply open up the photograph you’d like to work on. Make sure you you are in the standard edit mode, not in quick fix.

Now, simply click on enhance on your top tool bar, and, in the drop-down menu that appears, select adjust color. Then, in the drop-down menu that appears there, pick adjust hue/saturation.

Like this:

There are many fun toggles to toy around with, so experiment and have fun! What I do when the hue/saturation box appears, is switch where it says master and drop down to each color individually. When I am on blues, for example, I tend to bump up the saturation pretty heavily.

Like this:

Try boosting all the colors one by one to get the look you’re going for. Be especially careful when upping the reds when you have people in your photograph, however. Skin tones can get way out of whack quickly that way.

But if you experiment around, you can quickly learn how to make your photos go from this…

…to this!!

Oh, how I love Photoshop.

I’ve never been in touch with the Photoshop folks and don’t have a deal with them. But wouldn’t it be sweet if I did? Anyone work for Photoshop? Anyone!? Ahem.