Saturation

photo courtesy of Bair Art Edition

What is saturation?

"In graphics and imaging, color saturation is used to describe the intensity of color in the image. A saturated image has overly bright colors."

Saturation is a critical aspect of photography. It can bring your photo to life, it can make it a dreary sight, and it can completely ruin a photo by making it unreasonably inauthentic. How to digitally post process your saturation is beyond the scope of this course, however some cameras have some limited built in saturation controls. The images above you see, from top to bottom, an over saturated image, the original image, and desaturated image. Occasionally, amateurs will assume that more color is always better and that is not always the case. Its a fine line between a vivid strong blue ocean and an overwhelming fake and fictional blue. As you can see, with the over saturated image, no one would thinks this is a well crafted photo. This week's bit of advice, when you find yourself in post processing or changing settings on your camera, when it comes to saturation less is more .

There are times when a photo is made by the fact that it is desaturated. The are times a photo is brought to life with a little boost in the saturation. Too often are there times that a photo is ruined by too aggressive of a saturation boost.