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Tip #19: Photo Color Saturation
By: Tedric Garrison (Photoshop 7)Sometimes, through no fault of your own, pictures seem a little flat. No problem,
we can take care of that. First, go to "File" and open the picture in question.
Second go over to the third heading from the left called "Image", click on it once
to bring up a drop down menu. Within that menu, go down to the second item
called "Adjustments", you will notice it has a small pointer off to the right side.
That pointer indicates that it has another menu of its own. If any item has one of
those pointers off to the side all you have to do is put your mouse over that
subject and it will automatically open the next menu. Within that new menu, go
down to the eighth item listed, "Hue/Saturation" and Click on it once.
That will open it's own small tool box that contains three slider bars. The first of
these is called "Hue", it effects over all color range which I have never needed to
use. Play with it for a moment and you will see why. The second of these is the
"Saturation" bar, and this is the most useful. It will increase or decrease the
over-all saturation of the existing colors without changing them unnaturally. It's
almost like using a polarizing filter after the fact. The third bar called "Lightness"
controls over-all lightness or darkness. Although this can be useful, I make those adjustments from a different menu which also allows you to control contrast at
the same time. Any way, that's it. If you ever wondered why some people have
such rich vivid colors in their picture it could be that they shot with a polarizing filter,
or . . . they just know how to increase their color saturation with Photoshop.
Photoshop Tip #19: Tedric Garrison tedric@betterphototips.com
