How can I make the colour better?

[JAC40]

Hi. When I took this photo, I could swear the duck was bright yellow but it's turned out rather pale! Is there any way I can edit it so that I can make the duck yellower but not the water? I tried but the water went a weird colour! To be fair the pond was very green on the day. I'm new to dslr photography and haven't learnt a great deal about editing. I have Photoshop. Any advice would be welcome. I know it's not a great photo image wise but I just want to learn more about colour editing. Thank you.

 

[Rocket]

There are various ways of recovery, You could try uping the curves and then the colour saturation if there is any yellow on the duck it will enhance it. The image also needs some sharpening.

 

[Digifrog]

The image is slightly underexposed and is in need of some added saturation for a start. Be subtle in these steps and then you have a starting point. Then...

Open Curves and push the midtones up a little
Open Hue & Sat and boost the saturation a little.

To get the yellow more prominent you could try adjusting the white balance towards a warmer hue. You may want to do this selectively on the duckling only.

 

[minnnt]

This would be such an easy task in Lightroom... all you'd need to do is use the adjustment brush. Sometimes Photoshop is just too sophisticated for a simple task like this. If you have Adobe Camera RAW with your photoshop version you can use the adjustment brush in there. Just up the exposure, saturation, shadows and you could pick a warmer temperature too and then just paint over the duckling slowly and precisely that way you don't have any effect on the water.

Good luck.

 

[Jayst84]

The main issue is that you've underexposed by more than a stop, which is making everything look rather flat and lifeless. Push the exposure and you'll probably be a lot happier with it. Then you may want to have a play with colour temperature and/or RGB curves to tweak the colour of the bird further.

 

[JAC40]

Thanks for your help. I think I've messed about with the settings...I'll do a reset and start again. I have corel paint shop pro to edit photos too. Does anyone think this might be easier to use than photoshop?

 

[Rhodese]

I know it’s a cheat, a cop out, but.

Open in ACR, up the exposure by one stop.
Open in PS, copy layer.
New layer, fill with 50% grey, change the blend mode to soft light.
Select a new foreground colour by sampling the yellow under the water directly left of the bird.
Now with a soft round brush at about 15/25% opacity paint onto the bird following the lie of the feathers.
Build the colour up gradually.
When done, flatten and save.

Rhodese.

 

[Dr_O]

Thanks for your help. I think I've messed about with the settings...I'll do a reset and start again. I have corel paint shop pro to edit photos too. Does anyone think this might be easier to use than photoshop?

Surely you are the only one who can decide which is easier for you? As you have both paint shop pro and photoshop why don't you try editing the same images in both and see- that would be my acid test. Both applications are more than capable but what is easier for you may not be for me and vice versa. I think photoshop is fine but I know others who don't get on with it.

 

[Neil B]

You are going down the same wrong road that many do when starting out, forget the editing side and master getting your exposure right in camera.
Over processing and trying to recover shots usually ends with poor results.

 

[JAC40]

Hi again. Thank you for your comments. I know that I really do need to get the image as perfect as possible in the camera, but I also wanted to learn a bit of editing too. I had a go at some of the basics suggested here and I got the duckling a bit yellower. It's not great I know, but it's a bit more like the colour I remembered it!