Color is such an important part of your image, and happily Photoshop gives us many ways to intensify it so your picture pops right off the page.

In today's tutorial (yet another teaser from the forthcoming Photoshop: The Missing Manual--well, parts of it anyhow), you'll learn three distinct ways for creating more vibrant color in your image. And as a bonus, the first two methods also work in Photoshop Elements. Read on!

Hue/Saturation adjustment layer

One of the easiest methods is to create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer by clicking the half black/half white circle at the bottom of your Layers palette (it lives at the top in Photoshop Elements). Drag the saturation slider slightly to the right and watch the color brighten. The only problem with this method is that it boosts the saturation in all the colors of your image, including skin tones. Unless you like the look of hot pink skin, this particular adjustment may not be the best choice.

Using Camera Raw

Over in Camera Raw, which comes with both Photoshop CS3 and Elements you've got a little more leeway. At the very bottom of the dialog box you'll find three sliders designed to do nothing but intensify color. They include saturation, as well as:

• Clarity. This adjustment boosts contrast in the midtones, increasing image depth so your picture looks clearer. You’d be hard-pressed to find an image that wouldn’t benefit from dragging this slider almost all the way to the right.
• Vibrance. Use this adjustment to intensify color without altering skin tones. It has more effect on light colors than bright ones, but doesn't pooch skin tones.

Obviously if you're not editing in Camera Raw, those sliders won't do you any good at all.

If you're using Photoshop, one of the best ways of all to make your color pop is by temporarily popping into another color mode and doing some creative channel blending. It's a technique I learned from The Great Kelby and I like to call it "Lab Pop." Don't let the whole "color mode" thing scare you; this technique is easier than you could possibly imagine. Read on!

Lab Pop

Contrary to what you might think, the Lab Color mode is pronounced as an acronym: L, a, b, and not as the word "lab." It's unique in that it separates the light information (also called luminance) of your image into its own channel called Lightness, and the colors are divided into two other channels: "a" and "b". The "a" channel holds the red and green information, and the "b" channel holds yellow and blue.