Color Saturation and bokeh don't necessarily go together unless you put them together. But I have been relegated by my own health of late to editing and labeling some of my photos for stock use. The one I am posting here is a good example of both color over-saturation and of pleasing bokeh.
I have written of a phenomenon known as bokeh at times mostly with tounge-in-cheek as I feel that it is much to do about nothing. It is a term, presumably a transliteration of a Japanese word, but noone knows this for sure; it refers to the characteristic of any lens as to how it blurs pinpoints ofr light when they are out of focus. The term does appear to have origins within the Japanese techy community.
While I concur that some lenses deliver a blurring pattern which may be more pleasing to look at in portraits, I would hardly choose a lenses over this blur shape alone. It has been my opinion that the bokeh phenomenon is something that came to be observed after-the fact while acclaiming or disclaiming certain existing lenses and their desirability for given tasks. I further believe that virtually any lens can be used to make good and pleasing images. What may appear to be good bokeh to some, may be considered lousy bokeh to others. The picture posted here demonstrates a bokey that I like. Others may not like it so much. I did not set out to create a bokeh that i liked. I set out to photograph dragonflies--bokeh be damned.
Regarding color saturation, or in this case over-saturation, I have some opinions which are backed-up by both intuitive observation as well as some studies that were done years ago by Canon, or for Canon. I worked for Canon, USA as an Area Sales Manager during the time that Canon was developing and marketing their first digital color copiers. Canon was the unrivaled champs when it came to this and many other imaging-related technologies.
Having had an extensive background in photography and a good working understanding of color theory, I found myself equipped to fully participate with launching a multitude of Canon's digital color printer and copier products through their United States Dealer network. It was during this time that I first became aware of the survey that I am loosely citing now.
Xerox, a global imaging giant who had long-dominated the black and white copier market had launched their one line of color copier and industrial printer products in an effort to narrow the gap in market-share that was being taken over by Canon's excellent--if the only viable--color products. They did everything they could do to tweak the output from their color devices so that it was the most realistically-rendered color match available--no small feet. Color is a subjective phenomenon to begin with. To complicate things, there are various different theoretical color models that explain the color reproduction capabilities or color gamuts, and these vary widely. There are colors produced by transmitted color, such as computer display screens, which are typically produced using an RGB model of mixing color to gain the different hues. There are colors produced by reflected color from a neutral or white printed page which are governed by a CMYK model of mixing colors. These different ways of producing colors do not overlap very well in their gamuts--so color matching from a monitor to a page, for example, is simply impossible.
The human eye sees color differently than color copiers or color monitors produce them--so again, there is a wide variance between what is considered true color fidelity using one method over another. For Xerox to make their claim of more-realistic color was pretty earth-shattering to begin with--but in all fairness--they DID have a good standard and by most industry accounts--they cam much closer to realistically portraying colors that were close to those that nature produced--so you could justly say that it was more realistic color.
Even with Xerox's excellent accomplishment in producing good color fidelity. surveys and objective feedback continued to show that customers and consumers still preferred the color produced by the Canon products. Canon's products had long been known to over-saturate their pages with vibrant colors--more vibrant and over-saturated that real life natural colors--and more overly saturated by far than Canon color output products. So what gave?
The big Canon study that I refer to, indicated that most people prefer over-saturated color in their output. Wa-la. I could have told them the same anecdotal over forty years ago. If you actually produced color portraits and what-not, absent of some standard that you were required to closely match (such as a logo), people always preferred the color of their pictures with brighter than realistic pumped-up colors. The just did, and they still do. Why? You got me. But it was evident many years ago when the first color TV's came out. Color fidelity was far from as good as it is today, but still, TV owners would crank the color intensity or saturation up until it was almost clownish. It is just a fact that people prefer more highly-saturated than realistic colors. So--what should photographers do?
This depends. If your purpose is to match color logos or match true-life for some scientific or objective trade or for evidence or documentation (never-mind that it will fade eventually anyway), then you should do your level best to match the color--including realistic color saturation. But if your job is to please people with photographs of their family or art photos or other non-subjective uses for color--then just understand that you will sell more prints--or images--if you over-saturate the color. How much is too much. You'll know. The color saturation shown in one of my dragonfly photographs shown here is a bit too saturated. What do you think?
Cameras are now offering features that will automatically over-saturate the colors in photographs. My little point and shoot automatic digital Sony camera has such a mode called Pop that over-saturates all the images made while in this mode. Pop means that the colors POP out at you. You can also adjust color saturation along with every other facet of your digital images using any number of color imaging software packages. PhotoShop is the standard for this type of software, but it may be too expensive or too involved for your needs. Gimp is the name of a shareware program that is much like PhotoShop. There are literally hundreds of other software offerings from free to cheap to very expensive on the market. Several come with most computer operating systems or preloaded into computers. Color It is another one I have used over time.