Photoshop tips and settings question

[Jaime Vinas]

I'm not a big photoshop buff. I really like to get the picture right from the camera, but as we all know sometimes certain ligiting conditions or lack of color make the photo look bland. Ive been reading that people have certain settings in photoshop that help them speed up the photo editing process to give those vivid pictures. Can anyone point me in the right direction to understand these? I usually burn and enhance the colors. Does anyone here know what other techniques to use to give that "awww that adds alot to this picture" effect?

TIA
Jaime

[RaymondShay]

I think THIS is what you're looking for.

Take a JPG and run it through this process, it'll take about two minutes. The technique works fine with RAW as well, but I suggest you start with a JPG.

You'll see a big difference; let mr know if I can help...

[Jaime Vinas]

Thank you so much, I will try this when I get home tonight :)
Anyone else who wants to pich in , please do so. :)

[CSebesta]

Very useful tutorial.

I might add a Curves adjustment between Levels and Increasing Saturation. But using any one of these techniques helps my pics.

Also this link has a step by step Quicktime tutorial by Mark Johnson. He uses a similar approach using layers which are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them.

http://www.radiantvista.com/workbench/

At any rate good luck with post processing, you don't have to have CS3 to do good post work.

Charles