High-octane action photos

Give your shots an extra boost with four simple steps in Digital Photo Professional

Action, fast and dynamic situations all call for vibrant punchy pictures. Capturing the peak of the action is a skill in itself, but to take your RAW images to the next level bring the tools from DPP.

When you’re shooting action, it’s a battle with competition raging and that means it’s time to boost your pictures to bring out the best. These four simple steps in DPP make your photos pop.

Firstly, improve the RAW composition with a crop. At sporting events you might not be able to get close enough, or have a distraction-free view when you take the shot. If required apply a little rotation to even up the horizon.

Next is the colour, it needs to be vibrant and saturated. A quick solution is to change the Picture Style to one with more contrast and vibrant colours like Landscape, though there’s much more control available in the adjust image colours tab. Create contrast with colour as well as with the contrast control, reduce the brightness and saturation of background colours to lift your subject from the background.

Last step is to sharpen the image, making your subject stand out with crisp edges.