What Makes Professional Photos So Vivid?

Contrast

• If you hold two versions of the same black and white image up, one with low contrast and the other with high contrast, the low-contrast image will be gray and dull and the high-contrast image will be stark black and white, with little detail. The professional photographer takes time achieving the perfect contrast to make the image stand out, but not washed out. The contrast on a color image is just as important for a vivid photograph. When using photo-editing software, the contrast can easily be edited with the tools on the drop-down menus. Even free online software allows you to adjust the contrast of images.

Film or Pixel Quality

• When taking a photograph with film, the film grain contributes to the clarity and vividness of the image. A higher speed film of 800 or above has larger film grain that is used to capture more light. High-speed film is used in low lighting and sports photography. The downside is the larger grain decreases the image clarity. Although you may capture the image, the vivid quality is reduced. A low-speed film of 100 or 200 has smaller film grain and works well to take vivid landscape photos.
  Megapixels contribute largely to clarity of digital images. More megapixels will result in clearer image at all sizes. Professional photographers have expensive cameras with the highest number of megapixels in the camera industry. For the home photographer, purchasing a camera with a high number of megapixels will increase the vividness of the image.

Brightness

• An overly dark or light image will never show the subject in the best light or color. The brightness of the image can be adjusted while taking an image or after the image is taken by using photo-editing software. Like contrast, the brightness is essential to correct in order to produce the most vivid image. Photo-editing software and online-editing software have a simple slide bar that can be adjusted to find the correct brightness.

Hue and Saturation

• The color of a professional image can look brighter than real life. This is achieved with a higher saturation. For example, the vibrant colors of a sunset are enhanced individually or together with editing software. If the color of the image has a high concentration of one particular color, the hue of the overall image can be adjusted. Lighting plays a large role in hue. Fluorescent lights often have a green undertone that isn̵7;t flattering to the subject.