Automatic Color Saturation - Corel Paint Shop Pro Tutorial

Vikki Olds 1 Using the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool in Paint Shop Pro can really give some images a boost. Sometimes photos can seem washed out as does the image below in places. This is a photo taken in Cabo San Lucas and the rocks just don't seem to be as vibrant as I remember them. So, I'll use the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool to spiff them up a bit. You will find the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool under the Effects menu. Effects>Enhance Photo>Automatic Saturation Enhancement. 2 There are three options for you to play with in the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool. They are Bias, Strength and Skintones present. 3 Since I wanted more color in the rocks and there are skin tones in the rocks I checked the Skintones present check box. I wanted a dramatic effect so I set both Bias and Strength to their maximums. 4 The resulting image is very colorful and will need other adjustments but I now have the color I want in the rocks. I could have selected the rocks before I chose the Saturation Enhancement tool and only enhanced those instead but I also wanted a more colorful and vibrant sky. Please note the distortion here from saving to less than optimal jpg compression. This is not present in the local image and is not created by the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool. 5 My favorite use for the Automatic Saturation Enhancement tool is for the images I create of people. Above you see the original image. 6 I don't want her to look too colorful but more warmth in the skin is the effect I need to achieve. By setting Skintones present, the Bias to Normal and the Strength to Strong I come up with a much warmer image. Note the extra yellow around the hair line in the image below. Because I am going to apply a lighting filter to this image I want that extra saturation. 7 Below is the image after applying a lighting filter. The image has much more warmth and a large improvement over the original. 8 The lighting effect will be covered in another tutorial.   Copyright 2002, Vikki Olds, All Rights Reserved