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Thread: Increasing Saturation

  1. #1
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    Increasing Saturation

    I know this is a huge subject and I really just want an overview if possible. Could someone discuss the advantages/problems with increasing saturation by various approaches, RGB vs. LAB and using Joseph Holmes' methods

    I use it because I also have Joe's Chroma Variant profiles (both Chrome 100 and Ekta Space) and use them instead of normal saturation methods. The variants are assigned profiles (rather than converted to) and you can change them anytime in the workflow without and file degradation (since the don't affect the file itself).
    Doug Dolde

    Thanks
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  2. #2

    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Advantage: saturation of some tones can be increased without affecting other tones.

    Disadvantage: colours that might pop on a monitor might be unprintable on some printing systems. Knowledge of using Pantone colours in a commercial press run might be necessary to achieve desired saturation appearance of certain tones. Not always as effective as increasing saturation while working in CMYK (that last one should cause an uproar).

    The goal most people want with high saturation is to see that in the final prints. So the determining factor of what and how to adjust should be the limitations of that final printing method. It does no good to work up an image for really good paper and Pantone touch plates on an eight colour press, and then the next day sending the same file to be printed in your local newspaper without doing major changes to it. Anyway, if there was something more specific to your question, feel free to ask.

    I get the feeling the majority here have some sort of Epson printer, and are just trying to get nice inkjet prints, with or without using a RIP to control inks. I do know that you, and a handful of others, want nicer commercially printed images. Those two goals do not always dictate the same workflows.

    Ciao!

    Gordon Moat
    A G Studio

  3. #3

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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    I certainly can't answer the question but out of curiosity, apart from the potential gamut problems, what's wrong with using the hue/saturation slider assuming there isn't just one tone you wish to increase?
    Brian Ellis
    Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
    a mile away and you'll have their shoes.

  4. #4
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Brian, I use those quite often Q&D on commercial images, but on my own work I am always interested in the most targeted, least destructive means of manipulating tone and color in an image. Some people have argued that working a curve in the A&B channels in lab is less destructive than using the hue/saturation slider in RGB. I would like to understand why better etc.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  5. #5

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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Ellis
    I certainly can't answer the question but out of curiosity, apart from the potential gamut problems, what's wrong with using the hue/saturation slider assuming there isn't just one tone you wish to increase?
    Increasing saturation using a hue/stauration layer can cause posterization as more and more tones get driven to a totally saturated tone. This is not really a problems with subtle use of this tool (i.e. increasing stauration +10%). An easy way to see the problem is to increase saturation to 100% - you see the destrcution of subtle tone shifts quite readily.

    I personally rarely use hue/saturation - and usually I use it to decrease saturation slightly or to colorize. I think percevied lack of saturation is more often a lack of contrast. A little increase of contrast with a curve layer usually creates a more saturated looking image.

    Another option is to duplicate the backgorund image and set the blending mode of the duplicate layer to "multiply". This creates a very strong effect of more density in the colors. Backing the opacity of that layer way down can create a more normal but saturated looking image.

  6. #6

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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    I really hate changing to LAB mode. I understand the power of LAB. But changing from RGB to LAB can cause a loss or shift of tones during the conversion. And changing again from LAB back to RGB can amplify the same problem. Additionally, you need to flatten your image when you make the conversion. So now you just lost all the poqwer of layers.

    Personally I prefer to leave my image in RGB and add saturation with a normal curve layer.

  7. #7

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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Kirk, it's kind of like the zone system. Imagine you are working in B&W, and have an image with lots of detail in the zone 8 and 9 areas. If you darken the whole image by two zones, all of that detail gets turned into zone 10, so you will have areas of pure black where detail and tonal gradations have been lost. So ideally, instead of darkening the whole image equally, you would want to use a curves adjustment that leaves the zone 8 and 9 detail untouched, but darkens the zone 5 and 6, or whatever.

    Saturation works the same way. In a given image there might be some high-saturation colors that are already be near the max that your printer will print (so you don't want to change those), and there are low saturation colors that you might want to "pop" by quite a bit. Unfortunately in Photoshop's standard RGB color tools there is no such thing as a saturation curve. So when you increase saturation using the standard tools, that increases saturation over the whole range equally, including the high-saturation colors that you don't want to touch. Photoshop lets you can divide it up by color at least, but if you saturate your greens for example, that will pop all of the greens, including the "zone 9" greens that are already very saturated and are at risk for being blown out. In one leaf, there might be 500 green pixels, all different shades of green, with 100 of those pixels already near the top of the green scale, and at risk for blowing out to pure green if saturation is increased. Popping the saturation of all of the greens equally will blow out those 100 pixels all to the same 0,255,0 value (pure blocked-up green, like pure black in the B&W analogy). So now instead of a nice tonally-complex leaf, you will have a leaf with some big green blobs. Elsewhere in the image, whole leaves might get blown that way (or areas of the sky if you're working with blue, etc.)

    So there are a few things you can do to avoid blocking up your high-sat colors. In RGB mode you can make an adjustment layer that increases saturation (and put it in "color" mode), and then paint it only where you want it, carefully leaving out the high-sat areas. You can do this with either the Hue/Sat tool or the Selective Color tool. Sel Col is a bit more elegant and it creates fewer artifacts. This takes some time though, because in some cases you have to zoom in and work around the high-sat areas carefully.

    Or you can use Joe's Chroma Variants, which are a more elegant way to do it because he has mapped the saturation increases so that the high-sat colors don't get blown. I rarely use them, however, because they are too broad-brush for my taste.

    Or you can use LAB, which has a saturation curve tool. The a and b channels function as curves. The low saturation colors are at the middle, and the high saturation colors are at the top and bottom of the curve. So to increase saturation of only the low-sat colors, you can make an S-curve that will protect the high-sat colors. Using the eye-droppper tool, you can find the high-sat colors and lock them down, and then adjust the other colors. Green/magenta and yellow/blue are easy to do, and red/cyan are a bit more difficult because it takes two adjustments.

    Depending on what I'm trying to accomplish, I do a combination of these things, but my most frequent method for increasing saturation (which I do pretty rarely; usually I'm reducing it) is to paint it only where I want it, on a Selective Color adjustment layer. Make sure the layer is in "color" mode so the brightness isn't affected, and you also can pull it out of the shadows and/or highlights using the advanced blending mode sliders.

    Okay, more in person on Saturday...

    Cheers,

    ~cj

  8. #8

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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Whoops, I got the zones backwards-- I was thinking of zones 8 and 9 as being dark, next to black. That will help with the above illustration...

  9. #9
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Thanks Chris,

    I do a combination of these things, but my most frequent method for increasing saturation (which I do pretty rarely; usually I'm reducing it) is to paint it only where I want it, on a Selective Color adjustment layer. Make sure the layer is in "color" mode so the brightness isn't affected, and you also can pull it out of the shadows and/or highlights using the advanced blending mode sliders.
    And this is still in RGB mode correct?

    I really hate changing to LAB mode. I understand the power of LAB. But changing from RGB to LAB can cause a loss or shift of tones during the conversion. And changing again from LAB back to RGB can amplify the same problem. Additionally, you need to flatten your image when you make the conversion. So now you just lost all the poqwer of layers.
    From another post it seems like you do not agree with this statement by Greg.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
    "The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
    But I have promises to keep,
    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  10. #10
    Abuser of God's Sunlight
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    Re: Increasing Saturation

    Quote Originally Posted by chris jordan
    ... but my most frequent method for increasing saturation (which I do pretty rarely; usually I'm reducing it)...
    i was hoping someone would say that. i'm amazed by the universal quest for more saturation. even low contrast color neg films can look almost surreally saturated to me sometimes.

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