Do you always exaggerate contrast and saturation?

[Einst_Stein]

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In color landscape and travel photography, even in portraits in travel, I like to boost saturation ( equivalently exceeds the med high in the JPG setting) and compress the contrast (equivalently below the med low in Jpg setting). SO I set the JPG setting to "high saturation, low contrast".  Sharpness is kept "standard" ,

In B&W, I like high contrast and med high sharpness. 

I found LR's "auto" setting tends to do the similar, though may not be as strong as my taste.

The exception is when portraits s the only subjects. In such I like there default standard.  

I guess the "standard" setting in the camera is to achieve as realistic as possible. 

Comments?

Edited December 13, 2020 by Einst_Stein

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[Herr Barnack]

For Lightroom processing of color landscape, travel, street and documentary images, I don't enhance color saturation.  I may or may not adjust the temperature and tint (see White Balance on the right sidebar) but I leave the individual colors the way they come out of the camera.

In Lightroom,  I will enhance contrast (see Tone on the right sidebar) clarity, dehaze and vibrance (see Presence on the right sidebar) sparingly (+10, 15 or sometimes +20; maybe as much as +30 to +50 for abstracts).  The only time I enhance color saturation and luminance is if I'm processing an abstract image; there is a lot more artistic license with abstracts.

IMHO, processing is an ongoing process that evolves and changes, based on the subject and how you want to render it - nothing is carved in stone like the Ten Commandments. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Herr Barnack

[Einst_Stein]

18 minutes ago, Herr Barnack said:

For Lightroom processing of color landscape, travel, street and documentary images, I don't enhance color saturation.  I may or may not adjust the temperature and tint (see White Balance on the right sidebar) but I leave the colors the way they come out of the camera.

In Lightroom,  I will enhance contrast (see Tone on the right sidebar) clarity, dehaze and vibrance (see Presence on the right sidebar) sparingly (+10, 15 or sometimes +20; +30 or maybe even 40 for abstracts).  The only time I enhance color saturation and luminance is if I'm processing an abstract image; there is a lot more artistic license with abstracts.

IMHO, processing is an ongoing process that evolves and changes, based on the subject and how you want to render it - nothing is carved in stone like the Ten Commandments. 

In terms of white balance, unless the environment has strong color  cast, such as in a bamboo field, I leave it as shot. I found LR auto WB tends to be too warm. 

I like to boost the contrast with dehaze too, in ther okder LR it is clarity, but in the current LR I prefer dehaze instead. But this is after I turn down the contrast by turn up shade and turn down highlight. 
 

I guess what I did is subconciously turn down the global contrast while turn up the microcontrsst.

I am not advertizing my adustment, I am seeking comments as what I am doing is in the direction of faking reality.
 

 

 

 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Einst_Stein

[farnz]

If I feel that the colours need boosting then I never use the Saturation slider in Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom) because it will also increase the exposure (brightness).

I will open the picture in Photoshop, take it into LAB colour space and adjust the A and B channels until I achieve the colour boost that looks right.  In LAB colour space the Luminance information is separate from the colour channels so increasing colour won't also increase exposure as happens in RGB.

Pete.

[TMorita]

For HDR photography, I find that the colors become desaturated, so I will fiddle with the colors, but not for anything else.

Toshi

[Einst_Stein]

1 hour ago, farnz said:

If I feel that the colours need boosting then I never use the Saturation slider in Adobe Camera Raw (or Lightroom) because it will also increase the exposure (brightness).

I will open the picture in Photoshop, take it into LAB colour space and adjust the A and B channels until I achieve the colour boost that looks right.  In LAB colour space the Luminance information is separate from the colour channels so increasing colour won't also increase exposure as happens in RGB.

Pete.

Thanks for the advise. At the moment I am more concerned on whether it is a good move to turn on the saturation ( or whatever) than how to do it. 

Of course, I can choose to satisfy only my taste and ignore the others. But I take it as a learning process. You don't know what could be better till you get there. 

[Stephen.s1]

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"Of course, I can choose to satisfy only my taste and ignore the others. But I take it as a learning process. You don't know what could be better till you get there." 

If there are several routes and you have enough fuel to try each one then by all means take them all.  As has been said a few times; you're the driver and the only one who knows 

what you're really looking for.

When all else fails start watching tutorials..

[CharlesL]

Presumably most of us change the white balance as needed to get it right - right as we see it. After that, I manipulate specific colors. Some tree leaves might be an ugly yellow-green. A secondary object in the scene might attract too much attention with its bold color. I "fix" them. Picture Window Pro from Digital Light & Color, a photographer's substitute for Photoshop, has a great Selective Color Correction tool; some of you like the tool in Capture One.

Can you tell which color(s) were treated this way?

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[isleofgough]

Generally, increasing saturation beyond the single digits destroys the look of skin tones and looks artificial for landscapes. Have you tried increasing vibrance instead, which increases saturation in only desaturated areas? As far as contrast is concerned, that - like brightness - can help one area and hurt others. It is better to adjust black and white points individually if you want to improve contrast. The one exception for saturation is changing individual colors lightness/hue/or saturation if you don't have a good ICC profile and the image has too much saturation in just one color range. This was frequently true with older Nikon images that boosted red saturation by default.

Edited December 20, 2020 by isleofgough

[farnz]

50 minutes ago, isleofgough said:

The one exception for saturation is changing individual colors lightness/hue/or saturation if you don't have a good ICC profile and the image has too much saturation in just one color range.

Not quite the case as per my post above.  LAB colour space separates the colour information from the luminance information, which enables colours (or their saturation) in the A and B channels to be modified without affecting their brightness.  

This is not possible in RGB colour space because the luminance information is split 3 ways and combined with the colour information in each of the Red, Green, and Blue channels so saturating, say, the green channel by 10%, will also increase the picture's brightness by 100 + (10/3) = 103.3%.  Similarly, increasing saturation in all of the R, G, and B channels will increase the picture's brightness by 110% (assuming that each of the colour channels are equally divided).

52 minutes ago, isleofgough said:

Generally, increasing saturation beyond the single digits destroys the look of skin tones and looks artificial for landscapes.

Very likely for the reason I give above.

My deepest apologies if it sounds like I'm lecturing, I have no intention of doing so, but I wanted to make my point easy to understand.🙂

Pete.

[isleofgough]

Editing in LAB color space does have some benefits but is less intuitive to me when adjusting a specific color or hue without altering others. That might be just me. You can get some of the benefits of LAB color space without the complexity by changing some of the adjustment layer modes, like changing a curve adjustment to luminosity. Editing in LAB colorspace used to be pretty popular but I don't see much on that these days. Some of the benefits related to old fashion printing press as an intermediary to cmyk. LAB color space is also fairly inefficient, as many of its values are outside human vision and even editing in 16 bit can result in come clipping.

Edited December 20, 2020 by isleofgough

[farnz]

We all have our preferred ways of working and I would find working without LAB very difficult for more than just colour work.

Pete.