Making colors pop in your photos doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With a few straightforward adjustments, you can make your images vibrant and polished, whether you’re working in Photoshop or Lightroom.
Coming to you from Unmesh Dinda with PiXimperfect, this practical video breaks down the process of making colors pop in a way that feels natural and professional. Dinda starts by addressing white balance, a critical first step in ensuring accurate colors. Using the eyedropper tool, he demonstrates how to average tones from a neutral area in the photo, like a model's clothing, for consistent results. If there’s no neutral reference in your image, he suggests manually adjusting sliders until the colors feel right. This approach lays the foundation for all subsequent edits.
The video also covers refining skin tones using the color mixer tool. With Hue, Saturation, and Luminance adjustments, Dinda shows how to subtly shift hues toward magenta or green, depending on your subject’s needs. Increasing saturation selectively enhances the richness of skin tones while avoiding an unnatural look. For added polish, Dinda uses the color grading tool to introduce warm highlights, creating balance and depth.
Light adjustments further enhance the photo by recovering details and adding contrast. Decreasing highlights while increasing shadows helps maintain a balanced exposure, while the Auto Whites and Auto Blacks options simplify fine-tuning. Dinda explains how these adjustments are more about artistic choices than strict adherence to technical precision, making them ideal for creative projects rather than documentary work.
Masking plays a significant role in isolating colors for targeted adjustments. By selecting specific areas, such as the background, Dinda demonstrates how to increase saturation or even add a creative tint without affecting skin tones. He also explores how to subtract the sky from these masks, ensuring the edits remain localized. These techniques allow you to experiment with bold background colors while keeping your subject naturally lit. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Dinda.
