Digital camera people- Question about a setting on my A40

[Hayabusa Rider]

Next week I am going to NH to take some foliage pics. One of the cameras will be my Canon A40. Now there is something called a "vivid" setting. It might be interesting to see how it handles leaf pics etc. Now I got to wondering, is this effect do to post image software processing, or this hardware, meaning is the chip itself set to be more sensitive to colors, giving a more saturated image?

Trivial thing, but what the heck.

 

[Fiveohhh]

My guess is it is post processing..

 

[Jetblade]

Just set it to "Auto"