Achieving rich natural colours?

Do you have an example of a washed out photo, so we can see what is happening? If you are setting custom WB, that would deal with any colour cast, but not influence the washed out thing. All I can think of, without seeing an example, is that you might be over exposing your pictures. This can be remedied by shooting in full manual, or using aperture or shutter priority and compensating down a bit.

 

Perhaps your colour temperature is too "accurate"? the WB method is really good for getting the "right" colour but might not be the best to get the "best" colour. personally when i take a photo of something that is green i would set the colour temperature leaning cold so it actually enhance the major area of the photo to be greener, and when i take doll photos i tend to make the image lean yellow/ red to give it a rich colour to the skintone and more drama.

the other problem might be what MadamMauMau said that you are over exposing your photo or your flash is too strong, iso too high...etc

 

Usually, when the photos feel washed out it's because, as mentioned, they are slightly over-exposed. Also, it depends on your source of light. Not only does a flash makes the colours stiff and flat, but if too much light hits the lens from the wrong angle, it will give a sort of reflecting effect on the photo, immediately washing out the colours. Like when you try to look inside a window when the sun hits it in the wrong way? The WB is only to decide the temperature of the light in the photo, meaning it measures the balance between blue/yellow tones and compensates for it. (As an example; snow is usually considered quite blue and a normal light bulb quite yellow).

Now I don't know how the 1100D works, but usually you do have colour profiles already programmed in the camera. I did have it on my 450D anyway, but I haven't checked my 50D since I do all my editing in photoshop nowadays. In any case, the colour profiles can be set to be "vivid" or "landscape" or you could even (probably, I'm guessing) use your own settings regarding saturation, RGB and sharpness and such. Browse the menu some, I'm sure you'll find something useful there! :3

 

On the other side of overexposing, is it possible that you are underexposing? Does your camera have enough light to do its job? I second the request to see pictures that you feel are washed out.

 

Not sure if the OP is following this thread, but just adding another note regarding colour casts. I would tend to shoot "true", with custom WB, and then do any adjustments in post processing. This means you avoid messing up the adjustments in camera and not having another chance. If you mess up in PS, you just delete that layer and try again. Of course, if you shoot in RAW, none of this matters.

Another is a practical consideration. If you are fiddling with the colour space in camera, there is a risk that you will forget you have done it (I would do, anyway) and subsequent photos will be just weird. I suppose if you ALWAYS adjust your colour space in camera and check this EVERY time you shoot, it wouldn't be a problem. I just find that leaving my camera on the same basic settings each time gives me fewer things to remember to do. ISO, aperture and WB are plenty enough for me to think about before I start.

 

OK. I don't use the Picture Style presets, so I am not sure how much help I can be with those. If someone else does and has success with them, they might be of more use. However, as you are having problems with them, try abandoning them and setting the whole thing yourself.

So, colour casts. Both faithful and neutral seem blue cast to me. If you are shooting on an overcast day, the light will be slightly blue and that might be what the preset can't deal with. My recommendation would therefore be to set your WB manually. To do this, use the Custom White Balance option (it seems scary, but it is very simple. This video shows you how http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bq3yzTPb1Ng). Set that every time you start a shoot. If you really can't face setting custom WB, even Auto WB would do a better job than those presets.

Exposure. We thought your shots might be over exposed. In fact, they are slightly underexposed, so everything is a bit grey. What mode are you shooting in? My favourite is aperture priority (AV) as setting the aperture yourself enables you to determine the depth of field. This is great for still life, like toy photography, but won't work so well with moving subjects, where the shutter speed is more important in avoiding blur. I preview the image, once I have taken it, and adjust the exposure until I get to the point just before the highlights blow out. It would take a lot of additional exposure for your highlights to blow out, so there is plenty of room to increase your exposure there.

Subject. There isn't a whole lot of colour in your subject, so producing a faithful representation of it isn't going to result in a vivid image. If you want more punch, I would recommend doing that in post processing. You could increase the saturation or, in an image such as yours with muted colours and soft shadows, setting a layer to Overlay blend mode, then bringing the opacity down until it looks more or less natural would give it some kick.

You can make these adjustments in post processing, but they will always look better if you start out with a well exposed, properly colour balanced photo, particularly if you are shooting in JPEG format, and then make any fine tuning tweaks in Photoshop.

Good luck.

 

Also, to add to MadamMauMau's great instructions already - if you chose to shoot on AV-mode make sure you check what kind of measurement point the camera uses (sorry for the crappy technical terms, English isn't my first language). This is what the camera uses to decide the shutter speed, depending on how bright the camera thinks the object is. Does it measure by point or overall? If the camera measures by point, the camera will only take into regards the lightning it is on that particular point that you focus on, not the entire picture. This is quite handy when you want to photograph a dark motif with a light background, as the motif otherwise sort of disappears when you photograph with the overall measurement, since the camera thinks it's too bright and underexpose (i.e. photographing black dogs in snowy landscape, a reoccurring problem for me xD). Also, you can underexpose and overexpose manually while using the AV-mode, by pressing doooown... (I should really have my camera here) I think it's the focus points button, and turn the wheel at the same time. This makes the camera underexpose or overexpose from 0 to -2 and up to +2. That's handy too!

 

You may also need additional lighting in a daylit room, depending whether the windows face the sun or not (for example, my living room windows face west, so the room is much brighter at sunset than it is in the middle of the day). You may need to get right up to the window, move to a different room, or turn on some lamps to supplement the natural light. Just know that mixing daylight with light bulbs will make setting the white balance more difficult because of the different color temperatures.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

A quick caution on mixing lights. Some areas of your subject and scene will be lit by one light, some by the other and some by a mix of the two. No matter how you set your WB, you will not get the right colour temperature for all parts of the picture as your two lights will be markedly different colours. If you can't get enough natural light in to light your subject adequately, I would instead suggest blocking out the natural light (or wait until night time) and use solely artificial light, such as a desk lamp. But I would try increasing your exposure first, or up your ISO, as this is the easier option. You have some good diffused light going on there, which is ideal for resin. No harsh highlights or distractingly hard shadows. What were your settings for these?

 

Now, from what I understand of the Picture Style presets is that they override manual settings. So, if you set custom WB then use one of the preset WB options, then you will get the preset. So, my recommendation is to ditch the presets and just use custom WB as the presets are calibrated according to "ideal" conditions, like full sunlight, which is a different colour to overcast.

However, as presets are not really my bag, someone else might have different info on this.

 

Try this: Start out at Aperture-Priority mode and just worry about setting your Aperture and ISO and leave your exposure comp alone. As for the WB I typically leave it on auto as I can change it in post

Also, shoot in RAW and edit in Lightroom. Which would you prefer editing on? A small, 3in screen or a larger computer monitor?

 

Hi, If you can shoot in RAW, you can easily adjust white balance, exposure, levels etc when you are transferring the pictures from your camera to Photoshop. It doesn't take more than a few minutes to adjust

Reason why RAW is suggested is it's minimally post processed so you can edit it later but the caveat is the file size is much larger. However the over quality is much higher. Its a trade off.

JPEG is what you see is what you get when you click the button. The file size is smaller but when you come to post process/edit them, whilst you do have the same options available to you, RAW is just so much better.

Also when you save using the JPEG format, due to the compression, every time you save, the image will loose information. It can be slight or quite heavy depending what quality setting you use.

Lastly, Lightroom to me is much easier to use than Photoshop. Both are by Adobe but Lightroom is aimed at Photographers. The editing within Lightroom is also non destructive compared to Photoshop.

But everyone has their own workflow

Good Luck!

 

I have always aimed to get that rich color feeling too. Unfortunately, besides setting and what not, this also have to do with the capability of your camera sensor.

Ever wonder why Nikon's color looks so much "richer" than Canon's? Because they use Sony's sensor. These sensor on spec sheet can capture 14.1EV, whereas Canon's can only get 12.1EV. These numbers represent how many colors the sensor can capture in the dynamic range. 2EV is alot color lost. The larger dynamic range you can capture, the "richer" color your photo will get.

Sony does make excellent sensor. Just look at https://www.flickr.com/people/azure_toy_box/ And it's a point and shoot camera. However, if you have Canon, you can try Magic Lantern. It's a custom firmware that adds a bunch of useful function to the camera; one of which is "DualISO", which mimic the 14.1EV ability.