Why are the colours so plain? If you've just upgraded to a Canon DSLR from a point and shoot camera, you'll have noticed how plain your shots look with your new Canon DSLR.

Don't fret because you've come to the right place. Install Antivirus On Puppy Linux. This article will show you how you can knock the socks off your point and shoot with colour from your new DSLR. For some reason, Canon didn't preset the picture style settings for natural contrast straight out of the box. Perhaps they deliberately wanted to spur people on to play with the settings and understand how each works.

To apply a Picture Style File (.pf2) to your camera. Download your favorite Picture Style files to your computer. For EOS-1Ds Mark III, EOS-1D Mark III, EOS 7D, EOS 50D, EOS 40D, EOS 500D, EOS REBEL T1i, EOS 450D, EOS REBEL XSi, EOS 1000D, EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi, EOS REBEL XS, EOS 400D DIGITAL,. Everyone should have a preferred set of Picture Styles that they use on jobs other than the stock standard in camera ones supplied by Canon.

Well it worked for me anyway. In a nutshell, the basic reason the colours are so plain is because the contrast setting is too high. There are some subtle colour differences between the different picture styles too. We'll have a look at tweaking each setting to getting more colour out of your shots. A good tip for comparing the Picture Style settings is to shoot Raw and upload the Raw shots into Canon's Digital Photo Professional bundled software, where you can play with the settings to your heart's content.

For each image I'll use Canon's In-camera convention of reporting Picture Style settings, separated by commas: Picture Style, Sharpness, Contrast, Saturation, Color Tone. Click on any image to see an enlargement. Standard 7,0,0,0. This is a typical Canon DSLR shot, straight out of the box. Contrast is slightly too high with tones either very bright or very dark.

Choosing the Picture Style There are 6 different preinstalled Picture Styles to choose from: Standard, Portrait, Landscape, Neutral, Faithful and Monochrome. Each of these Picture Styles emphasises certain colours more or less than others.

For example, Portrait Picture Style makes skin tones more rosy, Landscape overlays a slightly orange-brown overtone whilst Neutral gives the most accurate colours. You can also download other Picture Styles from website, and upload them to your computer or camera.

For accurate colours with a bit more pop to blue skies, I can recommend the Autumn Hues picture style from Canon's Picture Style website. The skin tones from this picture style are more natural than any of the built in picture styles, with no overtones.

Standard 7,0,0,0. Although the manual claims that Standard gives vivid colours, for most scenic shots you'll find that the colours are quite natural. Colours are neutral overall with just a hint of redness in skintones and slightly saturated reds. Portrait 7,0,0,0.

Portrait saturates the colours by 1 notch over Standard. Skintones are hue shifted dramatically to the magenta side for pinker skin. Landscape 7,0,0,0. Landscape saturates colours by 1 notch over Standard except for blues which are saturated by 2 notches to give bright blue skies. There is a slight orange-brown overtone to photos, most noticible in beige areas.

Neutral 7,0,0,0. Neutral outputs all colours evenly so that there are no overtones. The saturation level is 1 notch lower than Standard. The Contrast is also 1 notch softer than Standard. Neutral is good for accurate colours.

Faithful 7,0,0,0. Faithful has a slight pinkish overtone on photos. It uses the same contrast curve as Neutral. Autumn Hues 7,0,0,0.

Autumn Hues is similar to Neutral but is more saturated by 2 notches. Colours are quite vivid. Autumn Hues uses the Standard contrast curve so midtones are slightly brighter than Neutral PS. Skintones are quite natural with the Autumn Hues PS.

Autumn Hues must be downloaded from Canon's Picture Style website. It may be installed with recent versions of Digital Photo Professional. Look in C drive>Program Files>Canon>Digital Photo Professional>pf2>ww05_Autumn_Hues.pf2 Contrast The contrast control adjusts the separation between light tones and dark tones. The factory preset contrast is actually quite high making highlights very bright and shadows very dark. This doesn't suit many outdoor shots. Lowering the contrast reduces this harshness and saturates colours more. Standard 7,0,0,0.