You’ll never increase saturation the same way again after I teach you the ultimate technique to improve saturation with Photoshop. Follow this quick and easy Photoshop tutorial that anyone can do to make their photos look more vivid so much more naturally.
First of all, portraits are not usually the type of photo you want to make saturated. If you load a portrait into Photoshop and increase the saturation, you’re going to get a photo that doesn’t look as good as the original. Also, if you increase the saturation too much, you’ll get skin tones and lips that don’t look natural at all; typically seen in Photography forums by the unexperienced. Unless you have specific intentions (ex. making the photo look like pop art), try not to increase saturation in portait photos. Increasing saturation works great with landscape photos because they can still look natural with a saturation boost.
OK, lets fire up Photoshop and get started!
Step 1
First, run Photoshop and load any photo into Photoshop. If you don’t know how to do that, I would be a little worried, but here’s how: Choose File > Open, browse for the file, and click OK. I’ll be using this photo of a beautiful girl to show you the acceptable results it has on skin tones.
Step 2
First, let’s try out the classic Hue/Saturation method that almost everyone uses to make their photos look more vivid. Choose Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation.
In the Hue/Saturation tool, increase the saturation to 50. Look how fake the skin and lips looks on the image I used. Remember when I said earlier that you’ll see these horribally vivid portraits on Photography forums by the inexperienced? Here’s an example.
Don’t click OK after you use the Hue/Saturation tool. If you already did, just press Ctrl+Z to undo the horrible saturation increase. Now I’ll show you the best technique on how to make photos look more vivid with Photoshop.
Step 3
To use this Photoshop technique, we need to switch the image mode to Lab Color. Why the Lab color mode? Because it has channels that separate the colors from the tonal information in the image, hence the channels:
- Lightness – Hold the tonal information
- a (also known as Chroma A) – Holds the first half of the color information
- b (also known as Chroma B) – Holds the other half of the color information
Some people say that switching image modes will change the colors and it’s true, but if you’re changing from RGB color to Lab color or vice-versa, the difference is so little it’s unperceivable. Now if you ask about this in a Photography forum, some elitests may argue that it’s a big difference and you only don’t see it because you have untrained eyes. Don’t listen to those people because they are wrong and they’re only on the forums to act professional. If you can’t see the difference, most people can’t.
So now that we’re on Lab Color mode, go into the Channels palette and have a look at the channels. They’re not RGB (Red, Green, Blue) anymore; they’re Lab (Lightness, a, b).
Step 4
Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to work directly on the color layer and not touch the tonal information in the Lightness channel. That’s the secret to this astonishing color boosting effect. In the Channels palette, select the achannel.
Once you selected the achannel, you’ll see just the grayscale contents of the channel. Right now, you’re probably asking, “How are we going to edit the colors if we can’t even see any colors? “. You’re right and a simple way to make sure that you can see the colors. In the Channels palette, click on the box to the left of the Lab color. An eye icon should appear meaning that all the channels are visible. Now we can see all the colors.
Step 5
Great, so we got the color channel selected and now we’re going to add contrast to the channel. By adding contrast, the colors will look more intense. Now there’s many ways you can increase contrast:
- Curves – For Photoshop gurus who are very picky about results
- Levels – For skilled Photoshop users who want more control
- Brightness/Contrast – For most people, including Photoshop experts, who want to save time.
Load the tool that you want to use. For this tutorial, we’re going to use the Brightness/Contrast tool (Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast). Really, it’s good enough for most situations. I recommend that you start with the Brightness/Contrast tool and if that doesn’t give you the precise results that you want, undo and switch to the Levels or Curves tool.
Now with the tool you’re using, increase the contrast.
- If you’re using the Brightness/Contrast tool, well that’s simple, you just play around with the contrast slider.
- If you’re using Levels, move the black and white input sliders closer towards the middle.
- With the Curves tool, start by adding a point in the middle of the line and moving it around.
As we increase the contrast, the colors start to look more vivid but it also starts to off. That’s because there’s two color channels (remember?) and we’re only editing one of them.
Step 6
Now we have to increase the contrast on the other channel as well to make them both even. Select the b channel in the Channels palette and do the same contrast increase you used previously.
After I did that, here’s the results. The colors look a lot more vibrant now but notice that the skin tones and lips look normal. You may think you’re done, but I’m sorry to tell you that you’re not. There is something extremely important to do that we haven’t done yet. We need to change the image mode back to RGB color! I you remember how we changed the image mode to Lab color, you should know how to change it back to RGB color; choose Image > Mode > RGB Color. And there you go, we’re finally done.
Final Results
Here’s a comparison between the Hue/Saturation method and the method that we used in this Photoshop tutorial. Using this longer method, even the skin and lips look natural with a huge saturation boost. What a difference!
