Photoshop Vibrancy Challenge
Some of these guys over at Flickr have come up with an interesting effect
It uses a setting called ‘Vibrancy.’ Vibrancy is a Saturation based parameter. As far as I’m aware, this is only available in Adobe Lightroom and the latest Adobe raw converters. I don’t have either of those, so I’m guessing that increasing the vibrancy will preferentially increase saturation of the least saturated parts of an image, whilst increasing the saturation of already heavily saturated parts of the image less drastically.
The effect that the guys on flickr are using involves a decrease in vibrancy, which desaturates all but the most saturated parts of the image, and then an increase in plain ol’ saturation, which normally (or almost normally) re-satuates those parts of the image. In other words, the grey bits get greyer, the bright bits get brighter or stay the same.
The challenge, in a nutshell, is to reproduce this effect with a jpeg.
Bonus marks for explaining to me how to do it with traditional film 
Actually, if you can get photoshop to do this, it raises a more general, interesting possibility: “A ‘contrast’ control for the chroma channel” (Ian Tindale’s description of it, not mine)
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:33 am
I’ve been wishing for a while now that Photoshop could make masks/selections based on values like the saturation of each pixel - but without knowing what this effect is called or what it would actually look like.
More than anything, it reminds me of looking through polarised sunglasses. I had a little go with the tutorial O Casasola listed and got this effect:
original:
http://marcus.minotaur.cc/sundry/Effect1-1.jpg
processed:
http://marcus.minotaur.cc/sundry/Effect1-2.jpg
I think the daylight was an important part of that one working out so well. The tutorial is clearly quick and crude compared to the Dave Hill effect they’re trying to reproduce.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
The tutorial Marcus is talking about…
And the Dave Hill ‘Look’ (he’s my age, sob, weep)
it’s interesting, but is really looking at the sharpening effects that Dave Hill is known for rather than the saturation thing I’ve been talking about. the sharpening itself has the effect of changing the saturation, particularly of low and high contrast areas, I think because of the high pass filters.
I wonder what a dupicate of the original image on the top layer using a Hue or Colour overlay would look like? Whether it would restore some of the original colour without losing the sharpness?
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:09 am
The effect’s not bad, although I find the leaves are a bit distracting in this particular photo. The second pic looks a lot sharper, possibly a little too sharp for my liking. I like the girl on the right
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:20 am
I’ve just uploaded a slightly better copy of that image, where i’ve re-applied some of the bloom that was evident in the original.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:38 am
Okay, I’ve done what Tom’s asking for and produced something that is purely based on the saturation map and nothing else
http://marcus.minotaur.cc/sundry/Effect1-3.jpg
I achieved this by:
- add a layer of solid red, and set its blend mode to Hue
- add a layer of solid red, and set its blend mode to Luminosity
- flatten
(this should leave you with an image that goes from gray to red)
- Image > Adjustments > Selective Colour, and on the page for Reds, whack the Black slider all the way to the left.
- Desaturate
- Use levels to narrow down on the range of colours in the image
(this will leave you with a saturation map)
- Use that map (Inverted) as a mask for a desaturated copy of the original layer.
As you can see, while it technically achieves the saturation-contrast that Tom wants, on its own it still falls some way short of the desired effect.
May 2nd, 2007 at 11:57 am
And this is my attempt to combine the various techniques into something balanced:
http://marcus.minotaur.cc/sundry/Effect1-4.jpg
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Just for a laugh, I decided to see what it looked like if you added Effect1-2.jpg as a layer with 50% transparency over the top of Effect1-3.jpg, and it turned out surprisingly okay:
http://www.everythingeverything.co.uk/files/Effect1-2-3.png
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
And finally (for now):
http://marcus.minotaur.cc/sundry/Effect1-5.jpg
I’m having to fight my natural impulse to try and soften the highs and lows in the image, since highs and lows are what the effect is made out of.
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:52 pm
In my instructions above, where I tell you to use Selective Color to lighten the reds in the red/gray map, I’ve found a slightly better way. You instead use the Channel Mixer, set it to grayscale, and put red at about 150% and constant at -50% (play with the sliders yourself to get it right). It gets better definition that way.
It’s quite annoying that Bob’s composite looks better than my carefully balanced complicated images, but it does…
May 11th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
[…] Following on from my photoshop vibrancy challenge, I thought I would talk about some photoshop techniques I’ve been playing with for changing the saturation on photographs. […]
October 16th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Don’t you just love completely unrelated comment spam