Canon EOS Solutions

Bring your intense action shots to life with a few quick tweaks in Canon’s free DPP

Bring your intense action shots to life with a few quick tweaks in Canon’s free DPP

Sports and action photography is all about the peak of ability, and your best shots deserve an extra boost in post. The key is good strong vibrant colours, plenty of contrast and the main action being the hero in the frame, let’s get started.

When you are not on a deadline and required to deliver JPG images quickly, there’s good reason to be shooting in Raw. Raws have the most flexibility for post, and that’s what we’ve taken advantage of here. Shot in flat light, under the cover of trees, the starting image was good and sharp, but lacked pop.

It helps to have your camera set up correctly, as DPP will take those camera settings as its starting point for your shot. I like the look of colours with the Fine Detail Picture Style and have used it here, though standard can be used.

The first stop is the initial basic image adjustment tools. If the exposure is good, move straight to the gamma adjustment and click the auto button to give a good starting point, you’ll find that auto also updates the shadows and highlight settings. At this point you can also apply some extra sharpening to make the edges crisp and increase saturation.

To make the subject the key point of attention, it should be brighter than the edges of the frame. You could do this by removing lens corrections, or by lowering the brightness at the edge of the frame.