By Shutterstock contributor Alexey Stiop
Quality standards in stock photography are climbing ever higher, so having photos that “pop” will help your work stand out and give your portfolio an edge. How can you create the most vivid images while preserving the maximum image quality?
Let’s suppose you’re already following the advice to shoot RAW or, at the very least, turning off in-camera processing of JPEG images. Vibrance and saturation sliders during RAW conversion will only get you so far before you seriously distort pixels and produce massive artifacts.
So you go out and shoot a nicely lit, colorful scene only to discover that once you’ve downloaded and converted the photo, it still looks bleak. What do you do? How do you breathe life back into this meant-to-be-oh-so-beautiful photograph and make it “pop”? Photoshop to the rescue!
Here’s the recipe for making a photo “pop” in Adobe Photoshop without sacrificing image quality.
1. As always, when you’re about to manipulate your image, create a duplicate layer (Ctrl+J/Cmd+J).
2. Convert to LAB mode (Image -> Mode -> Lab color). Don’t flatten.
3. Make sure Layer 1 (the duplicate layer) is selected and go to Channels palette.
4. Select Channel a.
5. Recall Curves (Ctrl+M/Cmd+M or go to Image -> Adjustments -> Curves).
6. Grab the handle in the upper right corner and drag it along the horizontal axis to the left to the first square as shown above.
7. Now grab the handle in the lower left corner and drag it to the right in similar fashion, as seen above. Click OK.
8. Switch to Channel b in the Channels palette.
9. Repeat steps 5 – 7.
10. Select Lab channel. Convert back to RGB (Image -> Mode -> RGB); don’t flatten.
11. Go back to Layers palette and look at your image. Too much? It most likely is. Good thing you did it on a separate layer, isn’t it?
You know what to do now – just lower the opacity of the top layer to suit your taste.
With this method you can quickly lose details in the red tones. An easy solution is to select the color range and mask it out. Go to Select -> Color Range, select your red tone and play with the fuzziness and click OK. Now go to the Layers palette and with Layer 1 selected, click on the Add Mask button while holding Alt. This mask will be saved in the Channels palette. Apply some Gaussian Blur to the mask. You can reduce the mask effect (add some saturation to the red tones) by painting the black areas of the mask with a soft white brush at 30% opacity.
A little productivity tip – you can save steps 1 through 10 as an action and assign a keystroke to it.
And one final word of caution: Remember the main rule of “popping” the image: moderation! It still should look like a photograph, not a cartoon.
View Alexey Stiop’s website at www.bigeyephotos.com.
54 Responses
Great job!!
I use a similar method for my garden shot, not the Channels palette in the duplicate layer : Using a Curves layer and adjust Channel A&B, sometime I also adjust Channel Bright to add or reduce some contrast. I think the result is same.
Tips: it’s best to set the gridlines more detailbefore adjust ( Alt +Mouse left click in Curves charts),it can make the grab more easy and effective .
If I send them picture like this, some reviewers would not accept it and said it’s over filtered. Who also needs to be adjusted and standardized are the reviewers.
Isn’t it best to leave most of the post-processing to the designers who download the images?
That bottom photo of the leaves looks terrible. Nothing in nature looks like that. The predominance of this over saturate look should be stopped not encouraged. Lets get real. A little boost to the top image might help but I bet it is a much more accurate representation of the scene. IF the buyer wants to screw it up later than let thme, but if you do it first there is no going back. A much easier way to accomplish the same thing is to just make a duplicate layer and change the blending mode to multiply, then lower the opacity to something that looks good. Adding a mask and brushing in areas that may have been affected too much then finishes it off.
I’m afraid I didn’t find this at all helpful. Doesn’t the author realize that not everyone can afford the expensive full version of Photoshop? Many, many amateur photographers use Photoshop Elements instead, as it is considerably cheaper. That doesn’t mean they can’t produce stock quality shots. But it does mean that a tutorial that assumes everyone has and uses full Photoshop is glibly shortsighted. Come on, Alexey Stiop – wake up to a whole world of other users out there who would welcome tutorials that are accessible to users of Photoshop Elements.
Hey in the title it says for “Photoshop” so if you dont have PS then dont read it.
What about Adobe Lightroom, it is a tool for photographers. Unless you are designer you should not need PS.
@Bill Milner: I think the bottom photo was an example of the cartoonish photo they want us to avoid. But yes, I agree with you.
this is a very good technique, although it adds a bit much red. bottom picture above would be fine, a big improvement, if he had just turned down the opacity a little bit more.
The top photo beats the bottom one by %100. Maybe I don’t yet understand what a good stock shot should look like. If it is the bottom shot then I won’t have many good ones because I can’t allow myself to produce such fake-looking images.
I have been struggling with the reviewers “likes” also. Some contributors seem to have EVERY image over filtered and excessively high key and they get top spots on the searches. Way unreal scenes. I agree with Bill Milner above, let the designer mess with the image if they want. We as photographers should represent the Scene. They as designers represent their client and filter as they both see fit. The photo reviewers all have their own ideas about what makes a stock image and even that probably changes on a daily basis with their mood or current disposition, work load, before or after lunch, family relations etc. We spend thousands on equipment, years on perfecting our photographic skills and hours tweaking and more hours submitting only to have a reviewer who for “whateverreason” hits a decline button in a millisecond because he has THE POWER. And doesn’t look back. We shake our head and put our hands up in the air in shear disbelief.
You are a better photographer than they give you credit for – keep that in mind when your images are thrown aside. And remember you can’t please every body.
If you want to shoot for stock, than you have to play the “shoot for stock” game. Remember it is their court and their rules. Personally, I don’t play much for the reasons every confused “would be” stock photographer has.
Bottom Line – Don’t give up your main income stream for the “stock” dream! <
Your absolutely right. If the public wants miniskirts, don’t make full length skirts. They just won’t sell.I haven’t submitted anything yet, as I ‘m picking the brains of all you folks as well as looking at the examples of Top Sellers etc. and I just can’t believe how many versions of “meatloaf” there are. SS says submit something creative and new, for any catagory, to get attention, but with 10million items and growing, how can anyone submit anything creative and “outside the box” at this time in the businesses maturity????
Thanks for the tutorial! Color sells. As long as you don’t overdue it. This is a great tool for stock photographers.
Lab mode is really important, thanks very much~~~~
Thank you everyone for the comments so far. Certainly there are differences in opinions here and this is great! Let me clarify my personal position. Yes, top photo looks more real, I agree (BTW, nobody commented on cacti – what’s up with that?). Should we let the designers “mess” with our images? Perhaps – and some agencies adopt this philosophy. I edit my images accordingly when I submit there. This article however was written for Shutterstock. And it seems that Shutterstock clients prefer ready-made, “turn-key” images that often sport bold, almost unreal colors. Have you checked top selling images here? We simply cater to our buyer here. You may agree or disagree with their taste but you will not be successful if you don’t offer them what they want.
Yes, top photo is real. But stock is not about reality – it’s about selling stuff. Have you seen a travel brochure? Have you been to that beach? Does it REALLY look like in that photograph? Think about it…
And thank you again.
Hi all.
All this is very interesting.
Alexey, about the travel brochure : yes the beach is not really what it is in reality. However, it also depends on the reviewers. I live on a tropical island (in the Indian Ocean). We have nice seascapes, beaches, blue sky, etc . But in the photos these do not come out “travel brochure” style. They need a little tweaking or, like in the good old days, a dash of polarizing. I have had quite a few shots refused because the reviewer(s) considered them over-filtered. A polarized sky – too blue ? Maybe in their books, blue vibrant skies simply don’t exist. Or maybe they are trying to stick to reality. But then which is which ?
Whatever the case, us as photographers will not have the last word…
Great info. Thanks. Just some questions; whats the difference to adjusting this in Camera Raw already?
I use to run this on the Vibrance, Clarity, Saturation tools. Wouldn’t that simplify the noisereduction process as well? I mean applying this later is known to add noise isn’t it?
Stefan, you can and (and often should) use Vibrance slider in ACR. I would advise against using Saturation though. The problem is – you will make the changes to all three RGB channels which may create pixel distortion (artifacting) if you go too far. This method allows you to go further without sacrificing image quality. It may not work in all situations. This is not by any means a “fix-for-all” recipe but rather another little gadget in your toolbox.
Just to agree that it would be nice if some of these tutorials were for Elements….. It’s always SOOOO disappointing to find great ideas (ok – the effect here is a bit overdone for my taste) which I cannot even begin to try out…
Please, Shutterstock, bear the many users of Elements in mind….
Thanks for the tutorial – I never use LAB mode and it really looks good. However, I have a stupid question. When I try this and go to change back to RGB, it says “Changing modes will discard an adjustment layer; change mode anyway?”. If I click OK rather than Flatten, then it deletes my changes and I am back to the beginning. What am I doing wrong?
Steve, the fix is simple – don’t use adjustment layers for this. Apply Curves adjustment directly to channels A and B (Image->Adjustments->Curves or Ctrl+M).
@Steve – or merge the adjustment layer before you try to change back to RGB. After all, you’re already working on a duplicate layer, aren’t you?
As Bill mentioned above, I use a dupe of the bkgrd layer then change blend mode to Soft Light or whatever, then adjust the opacity to desired effect. Is there any disadvantage to using this process for the same effect rather than the much lengthier process? Does lab mode, etc., prevent any artifacting? or?
The biggest problem with relying on buyers do adjustments like this is that we have the full resolution raw files to work from and they don’t. If I were a buyer who did this sort of adjustment, I might well be interested in downloading the raw files. I’m not sure what percentage of buyers like to do this heavy post processing and how many just want to drop an image on a page.
Useful tutorial, it helps in many cases, thank you.
here are two ways to do that in GIMP:
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15173919
http://tutorialgeek.blogspot.com/2010/12/enchancing-colors-of-your-photos.html
From my point of view, im also a designer, it looks great to saturate some colors in the photo, but as a designer i´ve seem a lot great looking photos in ¨the monitor¨ that goes opaque later in the prepress production. Why, because you have to convert that file from RGB to CMYK and the richest gamma of colors contained in an RGB file are lost when it´s converted to CMYK.
I think its great for prints, digital, photo prints and sort of things like that, but when it comes to newspapers, books and other offset prints it may change a lot.
Still i beleive the higher the color range in RGB the better colors are left for CMYK because a poor color image in RGB becomes worst image in CMYK, i think u know what i mean.
By the way a photografer never gives his originals, always makes copys so i think we most never give our RAW images because this are our negatives, and the procesing we do with it is they way we want our photo to be then the buyer will like it or not. But maybe we wouldn´t like what a buyer do to our RAW image and it would violate our vision when making the photo.
Anyway, a photographer known for his style, which has much to do with the postprocessing
Thanks a lot for your time on reading my reply
Wow, that really works!!!
That’s not just logic. That’s really sneibsle.
Very usefull, it helped me few times now!
Very unnatural result. I would never buy such a photo.
I’ve used editing softwares very successfully, but I’d recommend that you dont get too used to it. It could start to kill the creative brain in you if over used and you eventually may become too dependent on it.
For tropical countries in winter try shooting the horizon at 530pm in the evening. It may look a bit dark through the lens, but give it a shot and let me know. Let your camera start talking to you. That’s the best medicine for a good shot.
That’s hell of a technique,thx a million shutterstock, and lets hear more from you
Ahmad
My experience in photography and design shows, that this kind of image can be sold, but for kind of low quality usage, when designers are not really working hard.. Or for internet.. Offset printing quality for such colors, though, must be superb, otherwise red in forest and magenta in cactuses will overflow.. Any chiper offset will give poor picture with no details in reds…
Any educated designer knows, how to make from natural colors saturated in three steps. We here choose, do we give them this chance or sell “ready to wear” image. This procedure reminds me flower seller, who sprinklers yesterday’s flowers with some water to make them look today’s flowers
Very helpful and informative – thanks!
I still think it is a crime to modify images on Photoshop. So you messed the photo up? That’s how it came out, live with it.
What’s wrong with just using the saturation slider in Fireworks a teeny tad?
Thanks for the tip, though.
And by the way – you may want to get a spam filter, as most of the comments here are spam. Thanks! Mike Shaw
I am new and I want to create a photo pop .Olso I want to print this photo and put it in my bedroom .I want a thing pop in my room so I want a beautiful photo:D
Why can’t an artist wait for the lighting to make it pop, the eternal hunt for the shot, photoshop is cheating, just my opinion.
That’s like saying an artist that is painting something can only use primary colors and not blend any paints to create a beautiful painting.
Thanks for the tip I will try it and I don’t think it is cheating, many times the camera cannot record information correctly and without PS where would we be? And it is an art all of it’s own…
I find using camera raw a more effective method of making photos pop. Although using this technique is a good start.
very beautiful
thank you ,i am new and would love to learn how to make the photo pop…. but you lost me at point 11. …..i dont know where to find masks …also when i got to the color range and selected red tones it didnt let me manipulate with the fuzziness
i am stuck , please help
I really love the curves 2 graphs ,very easy to folow ….
thank you
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Going and adjusting the ‘Vibrance’ in Photoshop CS6 will give you same result.
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