Colour saturation

[1000yardstare]

This may be a silly question but hey I'm very new to this and still trying to make sense of it all..A lot of the photos I see on here, taken by you good people, seem to have a great depth of colour compared to the standard photos I have taken. Are these achieved by editing after, as I'm aware by adding colour saturation on the PC can increase the wonderful colours? Or am I missing something with the setting on my DSLR (Sony A-390)
Hope that makes sense.
Thanks

 

[DaveKing]

I tend to shoot RAW and will judge each image individually. I will then adjust the 'picture style' in Lightroom to match the image, and tweak if necessary. If I am editing a number of images I will look at 3 or 4 and then batch process the whole lot.

 

[1000yardstare]

Thanks for that.
I am new to this but have started using RAW. It just seems my photos look a bit washed out until I have added some colour saturation.

 

[Donki]

Thanks for that.
I am new to this but have started using RAW. It just seems my photos look a bit washed out until I have added some colour saturation.

Well if you are shooting RAW this is to be expected. RAW will have no picture style or anything added to it just basically the "raw" data of the image. When shooting JPEG your camera body will process the "raw" data according to whatever picture style you have selected. If you are new to RAW do some research so you know exactly what you are working with. ALL RAW images will need PPing work.

Next time you are out set your camera to RAW+JPEG and then compare your results of the same photo and you will see the difference.

 

[1000yardstare]

Thanks for the advice. I have no problem with tweaking my photos, just making sure it's not a problem with my camera.

 

[lensflair]

Thanks for that.
I am new to this but have started using RAW. It just seems my photos look a bit washed out until I have added some colour saturation.

When you shoot jpg the camera applies contrast, sharpening, noise reduction, saturation adjustments all sorts of things. RAW files don't have this processing so usually look a bit flat. You might find a preset that gets you pretty close in your RAW software or make your own. I usually use my own preset that is applied on import and then tweak sets of images as they need it.