That little icon in Picasa called “saturation” is extremely tempting, especially when you look at your landscape images and realise the green is not green enough or the water doesn’t look very blue. One little click of saturation and the picture gets a magical touch.Once upon a time I was guilty of this too. But stop and think before you click that button.
As tempting as it might look it kills the image and makes it look extremely artificial. I am not against using saturation. I do agree that sometimes images don’t come out the way you want them to and a little touch up is required but it’s important to limit that touch up so that the image still looks original.
Initially when I started photography, and this is four years back, I had no idea how to use Photoshop or Lightroom so I was completely dependent on Picasa (poor man’s Photoshop) to fix my images but I realised slowly that this made my image look extremely artificial. The water can never be as blue as it looks in the picture so what’s the point of making it look so blue? The grass wasn’t as green and the flower wasn’t that pink. It completely took away the originality of my image and made it look fake.
This is when I decided to let go of Picasa’s saturation and learn camera techniques. With just the right settings sometimes your image will come out absolutely perfect and still after that if you are not happy, you can give it a little touch up. Remember not to fill it with too many colours. You might think no one is noticing but if the water was so rich in blue and the grass was so green wouldn’t you and I be making millions by now with our pictures? Something to ponder over!
(Attached are some images I took after leaving Picasa behind)
