Devibed, Clarified and Saturated

I was playing around with yet another D40 test image in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 1.2 and came up with a neat application of color controls for an all black subject - automotive tires. This cropped, straight shot was definitely ho-hum and also tough to 'preset' into something artistic, so I simply looked at making a more rich image in its own right.

I played with the Vibrance , Saturation and Clarity sliders to do this little trick. And here's the skinny on those controls:

Saturation - affects all colors of an image
Vibrance - affects only primary colors which is effective for enhancing colors without affecting skin tones and other nonprimary color mixes - cool idea, Adobe!
Clarity - performs a subtle Unsharp Mask sharpening routine to selective areas of the image


The Straight Shot


Slider Settings: 100 Saturation -100 Vibrance 100 Clarity

No contrast, color temperature or exposure adjustments were made. The oversharpening is apparent, but the color shift does wonders for an otherwise dullish subject.

Lightroom continues to impress me with its seemingly endless control over all aspects of an image. I still feel like I'm scratching the surface...