Jason Pointer › Comments

I just increase the saturation or vibrancy dial in Aperture (I'm sure the same thing exists in Lightroom). No need for those complicated steps. Vibrancy in Aperture is the same as saturation but it won't cause clipping or unnatural skin tones. http://flickr.com/photos... - Benjamin Golub

Likewise having high contrast helps too. In Aperture you can use the contrast or definition dials, definition is the same as contrast but won't lose detail in the shadows - Benjamin Golub

I'm gonna start messing around with those dials in Aperture. Thanks for the tip. - Carlos Granier-Phelps

Wow... that Vibrancy dial works really well (and much better than my original tip). I also like the look given (on this particular photo) by lowering the Saturation and upping the Vibrancy. Sort of almost B&W with a slight color tint on the brighter colors. Thx. - Carlos Granier-Phelps

BTW, Benjamin, what are you using to export from Aperture to Flickr? - Carlos Granier-Phelps

I use the levels for RGB and Luminence, as a start, and fine tune the individual color channels as needed. Never really touch the saturation levels much. - Jason Pointer

Carlos: I export from Aperture to a date based heirarchy. From there I open up the standard Flickr uploader and upload. - Benjamin Golub

@Benjamin, thanks. Thought you might be using a plugin, but I guess sticking to the original tools might be better. - Carlos Granier-Phelps

Well, you can adjust vibrance/saturation directly in LR and PS, either universally or per color. You can also try underexposing it by (up to) 1 stop, which tends to result in richer colors. Increasing contrast also brings out out the color. HDR Tonemapping can make colors pop, as does Orton and other gaussian blur effects. - Eric P

Thanks @Eric. Will add those to my bag of tricks and test with my next batch. So far, the Vibrance setting in Aperture has done what I need. - Carlos Granier-Phelps

I usually play with curves in Photoshop... Bumping the contrast a bit with that usually does the trick for me. Sometimes, if I'm lazy, duplicate the layer and set the blending mode to multiply or overlay and adjust the opacity. - Her Lindsay-ness