How can I give my images more punch?

[Northstander]

Hi

I've never really paid much attention to editting my images, except for a little sharpen and contrast boost. But now I have an SLR I want to get the most out of my shots. I now shoot in RAW and this has helped make my images look a little better, but what they are lacking is a bit of ooomph!

Are there any standard techniques I can use that would really lift my shots off the page?

I currently use ViewNX2 to edit the RAW and save as a TIFF and then I do any further tweaks and add a small watermark in Elements 5 before saving as a JPG. I will shortly be getting Elements 10 and will begin using ACR to edit the RAW files.

To see what I mean, take a look at my flickr and in particular my recent autumn shots. They're OK, but I'd like them to be more than OK!

Thanks in advance!

 

[snapy]

It really depends what kind of feel you are going for but generally I find colour correction does wonders for my shots. Set your black and white points at the very least, try playing with the vibrance and saturation (usually you want to up the vibrance and lower the saturation a touch to compensate).

You can make your colours 'pop' by converting to LAB and pulling in your input and outputs in both channels A and B then convert back to RGB.

Have a search for tutorials online, there are loads. The problem is, you aren't being very specific about what kind of look you want to go for, different colour effects will give a completely different feel to the image.

 

[arad85]

One thing to note with raw processing is that when compared to the in-camera JPEGs, they will seem relatively dull. This is because the camera applies a set of "development settings" to turn the raw data into a picture.

I don't have NX2, so don't know what it provides, but most software provides some camera calibration or camera settings you can apply to the data to use as a starting point for "development". Certainly, for Lightroom, you can apply profiles which match the in-camera processing (or claim to). Have a look here: http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=366035 for a simple view of how a custom profile (for Lightroom) affects the image. You can use this as a starting point for development as suggested by snapy above.

 

[snapalot]

If you have a Nikon which I assume you do you can set your pics to vivid in the main menu, that will give them more saturation and clout. Tread carefully though as it doen't suit every photograph.