Improving Your Photos In a few Simple Steps - Boosting the Color

2010-02-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

You've probably seen photographs out there that simply look fantastic. If you are as curious as I am, you've probably wondered how some people can produce such magnificent results.

While there are probably more than a thousand different ways to edit a picture, I will show you one of my favorite editing techniques. This technique makes use of the LAB color space in photoshop. The LAB color space is a bit difficult to explain in layman terms but one thing you need to know about it is it's different channel layers. L stands for lightness while A and B are color component dimensions. That's it! That's all you need to know. If you like to know more about the LAB color space, here is a in-depth article on wikipedia.

Working in LAB mode

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First things first. Download this picture to your hard drive and open it in photoshop. (I'm using a low resolution picture in this example because it's simply easier to work with!)

Next go to Image -> Mode in photoshop and you will see that this picture is in RGB color space, which most pictures are by default. We will now convert it into LAB color mode to able to access the channel layers which you will work with in this technique.

Simply choose LAB color from the list under Image->Mode. Now your picture should be converted into LAB color space. Next we have to access the channel layers, because we are going to apply some changes to them. Next to your Layers tab there should be a tab named Channels. Press that tab.

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Now what we will do is to adjust the levels on the channels a and b. There are two ways of doing this. One is using a keyboard shortcut (CTRL+L on the pc) or simply choosing it from the menu (Image -> Adjustments -> Levels). Important! You will have to apply the exact same values separately for both channels for a good end result!

First, select the channel layer a. Choose Levels from the menu (or press CTRL-L). On the shadow input level set the value to 50. On the highlight input level set the value to 205. It should look something like this:

Apply the same values for both channels (a and b) and then select the LAB layer to see the result. Quite amazing huh? What we have done here is to add some dynamic range to the colors, adjusting the levels on the color channels to give the picture a little more punch. As a bonus you can apply some sharpening on the L layer to give the picture a more crispy look but with this example I think it is good as it is. Here is how the end result should look if you followed my instructions correctly:

compared with the original version:

This technique works on most photographs and produces a much more natural result than just increasing saturation in the image. On really colorful images however, I suggest adjusting and experimenting with the level values you add to the color layers to produce a good result. Now you can convert back to RGB channel mode and save your image and Voila! It has a much more appealing look with the colors boosted.

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Improving Your Photos In a few Simple Steps - Boosting the Color