Getting more vivid colors?

[robb01]

As I look through the photos I've taken recently, the colors just aren't as vivid as I would like. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any tips to make the colors just pop more?

 

[Marc-Etienne]

Which camera are you using? Personally on my Nikon D90, I can, in the menu setting, select the level of saturation of colors. There are several preset setting of saturation/contrast (portrait, landscape, saturated,...), or I can make my own. When I want to make sure that I have nice bring colors, I use the "saturated" setting. I'm not quite a connoisseur with other models, but I'm pretty sure that you have this kind of setting on every DSLR (if not P&S).
Hope this help a bit.

 

[SrBiscuit]

if you wanna do it in cam, you can up the vivid setting, or get a polarizing filter.
personally i add to it in LR3.

 

[KmH]

As I look through the photos I've taken recently, the colors just aren't as vivid as I would like. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any tips to make the colors just pop more?

Is your computer monitor calibrated?

What file type are you recording the photos in RAW or JPEG?

Once you have uploaded the D90 images, what application are you using to view them?

 

[robb01]

Most likely no, how do I calibrate it?

in JPEG

D3000 is my camera, I use photoshop CS2

 

[bazooka]

I prefer to use a polarizer.

 

[KmH]

Most likely no, how do I calibrate it?

in JPEG

D3000 is my camera, I use photoshop CS2

You calibrate it with a colorimeter. X-Rite i1Display 2 Colorimeter Monitor Profile Solution EODIS2 -

Your camera has already edited what the image sensor captured. JPEG is a lossy, compressed, final ready-to-print file type. In fact, about 80% of the original color data was discarded to make the image a JPEG file. The image saturation, contrast, and sharpening can be tweaked using your camera menu settings, but the adjustments are very crude.

What color space are you using to display images in CS2?

 

[Morpheuss]

I personally haven't gotten any light filters but on my camera I know i can adjust the white balance but also in adobe element 9 i there is a spot in the guided edit you can adjust the color in a few spots with lighter or darker and also there is an option to enhance color.

 

[GooniesNeverSayDie11]

Try using levels to adjust contrast, sometimes that can help in itself to help add some depth to a photo. Just open Levels and look at the histogram. Drag the black and white sliders in until they meet where the histogram begins. You can also use a saturation layer to boost saturation and adjust the luminosity as well. I would advise shooting in RAW though and learning to adjust the color yourself. RAW will be more discouraging when you first see it, but its a very dull basic starting point.

I would also calibrate your monitor. However, I assume you want them to look more like the pictures you see online, which means its all relative and calibration doesn't matter in this specific issue ( but something you would want to correct anyway if you want to do specific editing and printing )

 

[syphlix]

try shooting during different times of day and in different light conditions and see if your colors look any different before you go jamming on those saturation/vibrance sliders...