Why a Former Velvia Shooter Now Turns His Saturation Down

Camera makers, Fujifilm in particular, treat color science as a reason to buy into their systems, and plenty of people pick a brand on that point alone. If you shoot raw files of landscapes or travel scenes, it's fair to ask how much of that brand color makes it into your finished image before you consider switching.

At one point, a landscape that hadn't been shot on Fujifilm Velvia had a hard time getting into certain magazines, while Kodak stocks were mostly kept for portraits. Craig Roberts of e6 Vlogs worked through that era as an editorial travel photographer and chose Fuji over Kodak for its punchy, larger-than-life color. Digital took him through Canon and Olympus bodies, and now he shoots Fujifilm and small Ricoh cameras. His Fujifilm bodies even include a Velvia film simulation as a nod to the old days. Even so, he can't see what the fuss over color science is about. He suspects that may come down to what he shoots, which is mostly still scenes and rarely people.

Roberts also has a view on the color wheel that may surprise you if you learned color theory from charts. He finds the wheel too complicated to be much use and would rather read color in real scenes. A blue sky over green fields is all cool tones, so the two sit together quietly. Add something yellow or red, and the frame picks up energy, since warm is now pushing against cool. You can run that warm-versus-cool check in your head while framing, with nothing to memorize beyond which colors feel warm and which feel cold.

Black and white came into his work late. On film, he shot almost entirely in color because color was what sold. Digital changed that, and Nik Silver Efex Pro gave him the kind of monochrome results that used to require a darkroom he never had. Now roughly half his output is black and white. He's firm that he converts with intent from the start and never as a rescue for a gray day or a color shot that didn't work.

When you shoot raw, much of the color you see on import comes from the profile your editing software applies, since the file itself doesn't carry a fixed look. Since 2018, Lightroom has defaulted to its Adobe Color profile for new raw files. It also includes Camera Matching profiles that imitate each manufacturer's in-camera styles, including Fujifilm's film simulations on supported bodies. Capture One builds its own profiles for each camera it supports, so the same file can open with visibly different color depending on which program you use. Sensors and manufacturer processing still shape how a camera handles difficult hues, but trying different profiles in your editor costs you nothing, while changing systems is expensive.

These days, Roberts desaturates far more often than he saturates, and he rarely moves the saturation slider in the plus direction at all. Velvia-strength color is now too much for his taste, and he doesn't shoot JPEGs or rely on manufacturer presets. He works the Saturation and Vibrance sliders together to find his mix, and he says a combined move of about 25 is probably more than enough in either direction. Because a raw file starts at zero, any color boost is something you choose to add.

You can see the blue skies, green fields, and splashes of yellow and red Roberts uses to make his case in the video at the top of this page.