Photo Color Saturation For Enhancement

In nature, every possible color in visible spectrum is perceived with the naked eye. Any color predominating means, the object is not absorbing that particular color and reflects most of it. In a haze free sunlit day, the sky looks more blue and hence more color saturated than would be on a haze filled cloudy day. During sunrise and sunset, the colors like yellow and orange are considered to be saturated. In outdoor, light changing every moment, the color saturation on any object changes. In color photography when some frames look all black and gray, the color saturation is at its lowest.

In a given outdoor scene, human brain does the required correction in deficiencies of color saturation. But, camera mechanically captures the scene as it is and sometimes resulting scene on computer screen is not all that good. Increasing Photo Saturation is most felt in outdoor objects of any kind, due to the variation in sunlit images at various times of the day. Sometimes atmospheric haze also cuts down the color saturation to a great extent. 

A discerning photographer waits patiently, for that particular moment, for capturing a frame, with a color saturation of his choice. Yet, a traveling photographer rarely waits for the best possible moment to capture his image because of paucity of time. The best recourse left for him to use a photo editor in his computer, to render his frame to have a color saturation of his choice. 

Coming to Microsoft Office Picture Manager, one opens the file and clicks edit…, then clicks Color. On right hand side three scales appear for amount, hue and saturation. Thus one is ready to edit the photo for increasing or reducing color saturation. Thereafter he saves the photo in Save As…  mode, to enable him to preserve the original in case he changes his mind and wants to re-edit the whole frame again. After he closes the MOPM window, he will see a question being asked whether he wants to save the changes. Since the photo has already been saved, one has to click no button. Otherwise the original photo will also get changed as per the editing. A few frames are added for demonstration purpose.

Frame 1

Following frame is a landscape as seen from a hill top during Madmaheshwar Yatra. The frame shows the meandering river in a plateau between two hills covered in haze. Such frames look pleasing to eye but one is disappointed when one looks at the photo on computer screen.

 

A photo editing for increasing color saturation by fifty points or + 50 on saturation scale, the photo improves to some extent. 

 Frame 2

A Russet Sparrow captured in lens at Patal Bhuvaneshwar, looks getting merged with the background. 

To make it stand out, increasing color saturation by 50 points or + 50 on color saturation scale, the bird stands out much better against the background. 

On outdoor portraits taken on a sunlit day, the color tones on face are greatly varying on sunlit portion and shaded portion. The darker tones on shaded area softens with a decrease of Color Saturation in Photo Editor. 

Frame 3

In Following frame the portrait has been shot in a diagonally back lit condition. The skin tone differs in lit portion and unlit portion to a great extent. 

A reduction of 20 points on Color saturation scale or – 20, the portrait can be seen with softened skin tone. The background color becoming less saturated, the portrait stands out.

Caution : As in any form of Photo Editing, overdoing the color saturation or under doing it, will render the picture becoming worse than the original. Hence one needs to have patience to get the frame as he desires for best possible enhancement.

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