Going 50/50 for a Specific Look

Taking that argument for flicking colour to black-and-white in-camera just to see if it’s going to work better than colour, I have recently begun to desaturate images from full colour to around 30-40% colour. This imparts a fifties feel to the colouration (Yes, I CAN remember the fifties, but only just…).

One tip I can offer is not to use Saturation to do this – use the vibrance slider instead. You‘ll find this in the Adobe camera RAW processing utility (pictured here), in Lightroom and tucked away under Image>Adjustments in Photoshop. My money is on the version found in Lightroom as it seems to be more user friendly but if you only have one of the others, that’s fine too.

boxer 1

boxer 2
Difference between the two?

Saturation reduces/increases all the colours in a file equally whereas Vibrance enhances only the colours that are weak. So for example, if there’s a weedy blue sky in the shot, that’s what gets a boost over stronger colours elsewhere in the file. And it works like that in reverse. Vibrance is gentler and I think provides a better ‘look’; to the colour than a straight saturation slider. Try it yourself…

– BPSOP Instructor Robin Nichols

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