How to Get Vibrant Colors in Photography

Manipulate the color saturation for landscape shots.

Nothing beats having your camera ready to capture a particularly stunning sunset or a precious family moment. What often follows is dissatisfaction with color saturation -- your camera wasn't able to truly translate the intensity of the colors that your eyes could see. Start by learning and utilizing a few key principles of photography and then manipulate the settings on your digital camera to obtain more vibrant coloration in photos. For the best photos, be conscious of lighting and the color of your focus object in comparison to objects in the background.

Instructions

1. Study the color wheel to understand the principles of color contrast and implement them when photographing. Colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel will have the most contrast and produce the most vibrant colors in a photo because of that. The closer two colors are on the color wheel, the less vibrant they will appear in your photo.

2. Shoot photos near reflectors like glass buildings, bodies of water, or even mirrors to saturate the image with colors and enhance them.

3. Install a graduated neutral density filter on your camera and mount it on a tripod for stability. This method works best to capture the range of vibrant colors and details possible with landscape shots.

4. Remove the graduated filter and install a circular polarizer for indoor or non-landscape photos. The polarizer will reduce glare and even out the light across an image, thereby increasing color saturation.

5. Install photo editing software, upload your images to your computer and manually edit each image to increase color saturation and reveal more vibrant colors. Many programs allow you to increase the vibrancy of colors in select areas of the image while leaving other areas untouched. This allows you the most flexibility of all other methods but should be used as a final option after taking all of the steps to capture more vibrant colors with the camera itself.

Tips & Warnings

• The optimal amount of colors in a photo is two. The fewer colors in a photo, the more vibrant the colors will be because the contrast is greatest between a single pair of colors -- it's difficult to catch a viewer's attention with many colors competing for the focal point.

• Don't use a colored graduated filter because it will interfere with the natural colors of your image.

References

• Kim Jew: The Use of Vibrant Colors in Photography
• Color Matters: Basic Color Theory