I'm stumbling around in Photoshop CS2. I'm having trouble making my images "Pop" with good color. I'm sure I could use additional help w/composition and my basic skills, that's another story.
Can someone bring this image to life and share with me the steps they use?
Thank you in advance,

Richard

here is what i come up with

1)first duplicated image layer and added highpass filter to duplicate(blending Softlight)
2)then duplicated original layer again and add Gaussian blur to that layer(blending Lighten)and brighten that layer with levels and set to 50% opacity
3)then added shadow to half the faces using a "curves mask"

This is what I needed, my colors tend to be a little flat. I did some adjustments in LAB and was able to get a little more "pop" but not ideal.
Thank you for your help, much appreciated.

Regards,

Richard

This took just a couple minutes. Your image has a big orange cast. I took that out in raw. I opened the image in photoshop in 16 bit mode and then into LAB. Couple quick adjustments in the color channels were the only real changes I made. Then I gave it an orange filter to put back some of the origional color.

For "instant" POP a Hue/Saturation layer, color checked and saturation at 0 (or if color is not checked -100), set to overlay OR soft light and opacity adjusted seems to work pretty well.. (In CS2 you could use the shadow/highlight to open the shadows some, instead of lighten as I did here)
Then Sharpen

RSelby,
You mentioned you were stumbling in CS2. We would recommend that you pick up some books as well as utilize some of the tutorials on this site. I always recommend a book called "Photoshop Restoration & Retouching" (2nd Edition) by Katrin Eismann. It's the book I used to get started and teaches very good workflow habits, as well as includes hundreds of downloadable samples and tutorials.

Anyway, on an otherwise sharp image (as yours is) I agree with Crazyfly1, that a few simple steps are better to remove and improve color issues. Rather than use raw and 16 bit mode, I simply did the following:
- add a levels layer and "slightly" adjust each channels' white and black point slider;
- add a hue/sat layer and "slightly" reduce the yellow in the image;
- I decided the sky was a bit distracting, as the whites were blown out. So, I quick-masked the people, added a curves layer, inverted the mask and "slightly" reduced the tone of the sky.
- at that point, you could sharpen. But, since we don't have your original image, you may not need it if it is a high res, and you're not printing professionally.

Again, these adjustments are basic and do not include many professional level steps - just simple basic workflow that can add "pop" to any image. I hope this was helpful.

Good luck with your work !

Hey Richard you can try this.

1.Color correct photo first.
2.Duplicate layer
3.Filter-Noise-Median 2
4.Blur-Gaussian 1
5.Hue&Sat-Saturation +30
6.Change blend mode to Color-Opp 50%
7.Sharpen

If you use the Median and Gaussian filter before you boost the saturation and change the blend mode to Color you won't end up with any halo's.

Hope this helps.

Joe

Wow!
Your all so helpful and full of wonderful hints and tips, I appreciate it so much. I picked up a couple of books; Photoshop Masking & Compositing by Katrin Eismann and Adobe Photoshop CS2 for Photographers by Martin Evening. I'm going to check out "Photoshop Restoration & Retouching" (2nd Edition) by Katrin Eismann per TommyO's suggestion.
Photoshop is so intimidating, I wish I just knew it! Well, any way, the journey begins.

Regards,

Richard