#1 and #3 lack the same vibrant tonal range of #2 and #4...you might want to consider increasing the contrast and luminosity especially in #3.
This is meant to be helpful and in no way disparaging. 72dpi is 'screen' resolution from older days and is really a default so the image prints at the same resolution and size as the older screens. And it is just that, a print resolution that has no impact or relevance when viewing or editing on screen.
Open 3 and your edit in separate tabs in your browser so you can flick between them at the same size. This way you'll clearly see the differences, and its these differences and your mis-understanding of what you're doing that could be helpful. You hint that Chris should increase the tonal range and that your edit achieves this where in fact although you increased the vibrancy you've actually decreased the tonal range. There are shades, tints and tones but to keep things simple we'll just look at pastel colours. Pastel colour is colour with white, colour with every other wavelength reflected as well (white light). This is nature, there is very little saturated colour (colour of a single wavelength) because just about every object you see will reflect some light from just about every wavelength. The colour you see is because one wavelength is dominant, and has the biggest effect on visual colour. Saturation or vibrancy is simply the ratio of the dominant wavelength to the others, increasing saturation or vibrancy increases the dominance and it does this by
subtracting the other wavelengths,
subtracting equal quantities of RGB,
or subtracting grey and white! I would like you to see the two images in these terms. Flick between them and notice that in your edit what you've done is remove the grey and the white, (removing the white mades it darker). Your edit is more vibrant because it has more saturated colour but it has far less of a tonal range than Chris' original because you've stripped it away. See how the rich variety of colour in the sand is stripped away to leave the more dominant 'blue' reflected from the sky.
Posted in another recent thread but relevant to this one:
I see so many shots on this site that follow this path, so many shots where the pastel shades are stripped out leaving more saturated colour shaded with black...
Pastel colours look great in nature because they're seen against the natural background of de-saturated colour. As soon as you start stripping back the grey and white from colour (saturation/vibrance/contrast) you loose this balance and begin to see more dominant hues and less pastel colour. The more dominant (saturated) hues will look more vibrant than the pastels because they are, and your pastels will look less vibrant in context so you push more to regain the balance. This is what I mean by a subtractive process that always heads in the same direction, you start removing the variety of tints, shades and pastels and have to continue doing so until you achieve a new balance. A world without pastels. The trick with colour is knowing how to use brightness (separate brightness from saturation) and how to maintain the context of colour that makes pastel look good.
I think the main problem is twofold:
Many associate positive movement of the sliders with 'adding' and therefore see in terms of 'adding'. You 'add' contrast and 'add' colour. You've moved the slider in a positive direction and automatically assume you've added a property without really thinking. You see more vibrant colour and associate that with adding colour, whereas what you've really done is subtracted tints, tones, shades and pastels from your image.
The second is a little more left field and is really the underlying principal of art and design, get your head around this and you'll see images in a different light.
Many think in far too absolute terms. Art and design works on relative values, not absolute ones. I'll try to explain.
Think back to my tomato, if you wanted to increase the impression of red you'd 'add' saturation to the red channel maybe masking the background. This is absolute thought, you think of an object and you think in terms of adding the property to that object. If you wanted the tomato brighter then you'd increase the brightness of the tomato, think of the object and add the quality.
But what do you do to make pure white look brighter?
A lovely bright sunny day, so you take a picture, print it out and hang it on the wall in your hall. It still looks like a bright sunny day, (if you've not over cooked it
). Think about this because your photograph reflects a lot less light than the original scene and in those terms is
considerably duller than the real scene. So the apparent brightness of the scene does not depend on how bright it is. It depends on the
relative difference between light and dark in both rhythm and ratio. Your image will look bright as long as you maintain the ratio and rhythm of light and dark. It's the
difference in the amount of light an object reflects compared to a darker one that makes it look brighter. The same is true with colour.
Anybody still here?
Here's the rub: You have a picture of a flower and you want to make the pastel colour stand out more. So you think of the flower and 'add' colour or vibrancy (think of the object and add the property). But the vibrancy/saturation/contrast tools all subtract pastel colour from your image. So in 'adding' colour you're actually subtracting the pastel colours that drew you to the object in the first place. Vibrancy is not colour, only the property of the dominant hue. It's like Mao taking over China, everything becomes the same red, you remove the variety of colour that made the colour look good in the first place, the
relative difference in the colours, the context. To make the pastels shine you increase that relative difference. To do that without changing the pastels you have to decrease the colour in the rest of the image, (it's done already by photographers who add so much black to their images to make what little colour they have left look good). You maintain the levels of grey and white in your image if you want colour, you don't remove them.
NB. Contrast works on both the luminosity and colour channels, it is the effect of contrast on the colour channel that changes saturation. You can boost contrast on the luminosity channel and maintain colour.
