Colors like this?

[kevinkt]

http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/9800/49af3125d9764.jpg

How can I explain this? The colors look so amazingly vibrant even though it's not saturated... I have no idea how to put it into words except that it looks good to me.

The photo is also super sharp.

How was this achieved?

 

[stevenrecords]

A huge part is just good lighting and exposure naturally make the colors look better. He is shooting at a low iso and is using some curve adjustments. You can also use LAB Color mode. Go to levels in Photoshop while in LAB color mode and bring the A and B channels in by about 30 points. Make sure that you do it on both sides of the each channel.

I'll be doing a post on this Color mode on my blog soon with a video tutorial.