Target and tweak the hue, saturation and lightness of specific colours in Capture NX-D for that vintage postcard effect

George Cairns demonstrates how to target and tweak the hue, saturation and lightness of specific colours

Despite being a free app, Capture NX-D is surprisingly powerful – especially when it comes to making colour adjustments. You can quickly produce a more colourful looking photograph by sliding the Tone panel’s Saturation slider to the right. However, if you boost all the colours in a shot equally then you may end up with oversaturated photos that bear little resemblance to what you saw on location. Some areas in the photo, such as a pale blue sky, will suit a particular boost in saturation to give them more impact. However, Caucasian skin tones could end up looking just slightly too orange.

Fortunately Capture NX-D’s versatile LCH (Lightness, Chroma and Hue) panel enables you to selectively boost colour saturation to suit different parts of your photo. You can give skin tones a subtle increase in saturation while providing a more significant boost for other areas. The LCH panel also enables you to lighten or darken the tones of individual colours. We’ll show you how to darken a blue sky so that clouds pop out more in contrast.

We will also explain you how to adjust specific hues to mimic the cyan sky that you might find in vintage picture postcards. This effect can suit subjects such as our rather lovely seaside start file.