How much saturation do you usually add/remove in your photos?

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Lots of Nikon users boost the saturation, Canon has more contrast by default, so it does not appear toneed more saturation.

 

[pdirestajr]

I only increase "vibrance" in post slightly (depending on scene). I find it a "smarter" saturation slider, in that it won't clip the already saturated parts of the image.

 

[marekjoz]

I know what you all mean saying, that the poll may be misleading or there is no simple answer. Anyway I still find your answers pretty useful:
1. Rather vibrance in Lightroom, not saturation
2. If anything, rather +1 than +4

It's still useful information for me and thank you for participating. What I find from your statements is, that you rather do not tend to oversaturate photos, making them look more artificial, but sometimes more interesting. It's maybe easy to make fun of Ken, but it could occure, that in reality many of us oversaturate our photos.

I also understand, that there is no standard or baseline but the question in workflow is - how much time do you spend on each photo? Of course - no simple answer here, as it can be 30 seconds or 30 minutes. But I assume, that if you work on 100, 200 photos from an event, then you don't spend 30 minutes on each photo, but rather try to copy/paste settings used in one photo to others, which seem to be similar in their lighting conditions. As I shoot RAW only, I simply found out, that in DPP I tend to set Standard or Faithful style, and after having normalized brightness, contrast, shadows and highlights I always check if the photo could not be a little more saturated. But in Lightroom I also prefer to deal with vibrance.
If the photo doesn't require perspective correction I prefer anyway to use DPP because I think, that their DLO is better, than LR's Profile Correction.

 

[unadog]

It's still useful information for me and thank you for participating.

I agree, it is useful.

When I shot film for scanning, I always shot a lower contrast, lower saturation color negative film. My favorite was Portra 160NC.

I found then and I still find now that you can always ADD contrast and saturation in post. Basically you are compressing the range and throwing away data.

You cannopt go in the opposite direction in post. If you reduce contrast or saturation (on a JPEG, etc) you get banding, because the data just is not there.

I also come from a fine art background. To me lower stauration & contrast lend themelves to a more complex, nuanced image.

Good luck!

Michael

 

[CharlieB]

I've found that what worked ok with my XTi was huge overkill for the 5DII, if that means anything. I'd dial in a two clicks of saturation + on the XTi, but keep it "default" on the 5DII

 

[K-amps]

With the 5Dc, I found myself boosting vibrance but not boosting saturation. With the 5diii, I don't feel this need, in fact sometimes need to -1 saturation.

I do however almost always increase blacks and/ or contrast; this has a byproduct of "virtually" boosting saturation in itself...

 

[Kernuak]

For the majority of shots, I don't alter the saturation. However, for some sunset landscapes, I increase highlights saturation in Lightroom according to what individual shots need. As a general rule, I add a medium contrast curve in Photoshop (I know, it's sometimes a bit contrived the way I've developed my workflow, but it's the easiest way to get what I want without finding time to relearn a better method), which sometimes results in oversaturation, so for quite a few wildlife shots, I actually reduce saturation after applying the curves adjustment. In camera I have it set to the Standard setting, but I shoot in RAW anyway, although I have done my last few shoots in JPEG and RAW, as one recent shoot needed a quick turnaround at a press event and I haven't bothered to change it back.