BOOSTING SATURATION OF DIGITAL IMAGES

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

You might have wondered many times about your digital images not having that amazing colors and the feel that a slide film would give you. People who have migrated from Provia or Velvia would feel this ever more than anyone else. One can try working on Photoshop or the raw processing software to get similar effects but that requires you to have excellent understanding of digital processing and the science involved and would still be prone to errors and sometimes harsh colors.

I saw such a question raised in a forum recently and there are a couple of solutions proposed. The question said "I have tried custom curves, hue changes, tone selection, color mode selection, but to no avail."

Of the several solutions proposed in the thread, notable is the Velvia Vision, a Photoshop plugin by fredmiranda.com. I have seen some sample images by others earlier, which had generated excellent saturation by using Velvia plugin. The sample images in the website are also inspiring enough. This does appear to be an excellent tool for improving saturation to match that of transparencies. Fredmiranda also has a Photoshop action - Digital Velvia for producing saturated images.