Saturation is not your friend
When I first started taking and editing photos, the only app I had was the original iPhoto on my original iMac (this was 2008), and of course I knew nothing about editing photos (or photography, for that matter). But I was excited and interested, and I loved big, bold colors that I saw in other photographer’s images. So of course, I quickly learned that moving the saturation slider would make the colors go wild. So I moved it, and I moved it a lot.
As a result, I got some pretty wild colors, and I thought it looked great. But I started to notice that photos from those I admired didn’t quite look like mine. Sure, their images had big, bold colors but it didn’t seem as “over the top” as some of the results that I was getting.
Because I was just using the Saturation slider, I was making every color in the image increase in intensity. That’s the thing about Saturation - it’s global and it does not discriminate. Every color gets boosted the same amount when you use it, and that rarely looks good on an image.
Over time, I learned about HSL which gave me the ability to better control color in my images because I could pick specific colors to saturate or desaturate (as well as shifting hues and luminance). And that was a key learning - that not every color needs to be saturated for an image to pop. In fact, it looks better if you just pick one or two colors to really stand out, and take better control over the other colors by reducing their intensity.
I also learned about Vibrance, which adds a little zest to the non-dominant colors, helping boost the color look in any image (although you want to be careful with this as well, since it is also global). But it’s a good alternative to Saturation - just use it sparingly.
Eventually (and I mean years later), I learned how to use masking tools to really control my images, and that was what made all the difference. Taking that sort of control over an image is a huge step forward in your editing practice, and that is why I always talk about masking (and why I use it so much).
These days there are a lot of color tools which separate your color adjustments based on the tonal range (they vary some based on your editor of choice of course), so any increase in color intensity can be contained that way as well. But this provides more control, which is essential.
This was about color but that’s the beauty of masking and color tools which separate adjustments by tonal range - you localize and control your edit, and your results will improve.
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