I’ve been receiving a lot of requests for the color pop stuff. Oh, how I love saying stuff.  I’m happy to oblige, though. Here’s a basic but highly effective color pop technique I use every now and then. It’s nothing extreme–as I’m sure you didn’t expect from me either—just a light enhancing pop.

If you know the steps, you can increase or decrease the intensity to your liking. Play with blend modes, add extra color overlays to create warmth or coolness. Just try and create a color pop that works best for your photos.

 
The Technique:

A color pop isn’t just one adjustment, it’s a few combined steps. Easy steps, though. You give the photo a boost, which is the pop, you light it up and increase the colors. It’s that simple. Let me show you how.

 

Color Pop:

Here’s my SOOC storyboard (no, the storyboards didn’t come with the camera). It looks fairly okay as is, but this is one of those classic boards that could benefit from a little pop.

 

First things first, I’m adding the pop. Press CTRL + J, or in your top bar menu go to Layer >> New >> Layer via Copy.

 

Rename your layer to something like Pop. Hey now, there’s nothing wrong with being predictable!

 

Set the layer mode to Soft Light. This particular blend mode increases the contrast in a rather mild way, giving your photo just the boost it needs. You can play with different blend modes.

 

Adjust the opacity to your liking. I opted for 40%.

 

Time to light things up. Click on the adjustments layers icon at the bottom of your layer palette and from the menu choose Curves.

 

I only drag the curves line a little to the left to brighten the photo. Nothing too extreme. Unless you want to be extreme.

 

So, we’ve got the pop and brightness covered, now it’s time to crank up the saturation a little. Open a new adjustment layer and choose Hue/Saturation from the menu.

 

I gave mine a +10.  This should be enough to boost the colors without making the skintone seem completely off. That’s usually my biggest pet peeve when it comes to color pops.

 

Tip: If you want the colors of your grass and sky to be a tad greener/ bluer as well, give the Hue a +3. Don’t go any higher than that, it tends to create those obviously fake grass and sky colors you see here and there.

 

Now I never cared for a messy layer palette, so let’s group things. Click on the Group icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

 

And give your group a name.

 

Hold down the Shift key while you select all the layers, and drag them on top of the group layer and just drop them in there.

 

That cleaned things up, if you click the little triangle left of the group icon, the group will unfold again.

 

I love what this pop does to the colors in the photo.

 

Cheat sheet:

• Press CTRL + J to duplicate the background layer.
• Rename the layer
• Set the layer mode to Soft Light
• Adjust the opacity to your liking
• Add a Curves adjustment layer
• Drag the line a little to the left to brighten things up
• Add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer
• Set the Saturation to +10
• Click the group icon in the layer palette
• Rename the Group
• Select the layers you’ve made while holding down Shift
• Drop the layers into the group layer

 

Want to turn this Color Pop technique into an action? Here’s a tutorial on creating your own actions. If you want me to slap one up, just let me know.