MODIFYING SATURATION

Stop! Before you touch that saturation slider, be sure you have are ready to do so and that you are selecting the very best option. And before that, you need to understand color a bit.

The colors we use in photography, whether in the camera or in post processing are additive colors. The colors added are red, blue and green, referred to as RGB. Think of it this way. We start with black then add colors some of those colors. If we add 100% of only one of those colors, we get a pure color, such as pure red. If we add 100% of all three colors, we get pure white. So if we add 100% red, then add 50% green and 50% blue we will get a predominantly red color that is getting lighter than red (pink). This can be seen by viewing the changes on the horizontal axis of our color picker. Compare how these screen captures show the RGB values. 

Now if we take our red and reduce its percentage, but do not add green or blue we get darker and darker reds until we have removed all the red, when it becomes black. This is seen on the vertical axis of the color picker. All the shades of red in between these areas are involve reducing red and adding green and/or blue. The intermediate shades of yellow, magenta and cyan use the following formulas:

In Photoshop and other post processing programs there is a color picker. When you use the color picker, moving the selected point around will increase or decrease the luminance (also known as value or brightness) and will increase and decrease the saturation.

Changing the amounts of the non-dominant color in relationship to each other will also change the hue or shade of the color. So reducing the green in a shade of red and adding a blue will make the color more magenta, while adding green and reducing the blue will make the color more yellow.  

To further understand saturation, take a look at this color gamut diagram that shows what colors can be seen or replicated:

Now that we have seen several reasons not to highly saturate your images, let's say you still want to saturate all or parts of your image. You can use saturation to your advantage for reasons other than it helps sell prints. For one, more saturated areas draw the eye. However, if we highly saturate an entire print, what are we drawing the eye to? Not the subject, but the entire print I suppose. A single highly saturated color can also help match the color palette in a client's home. In photography, we can often adjust our images to make them more suitable for a buyer. In considering the techniques below, ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish with increased saturation before altering your image.

You have control over colors in your image by using a variety of methods, usually in the form of sliders. These sliders work in various ways to affect the Hue, Saturation or Luminance (HSL sliders). Before using any of the sliders there is another step to take.

First, you want to make sure you have accurate color balance. It is easy for a camera’s settings, natural light at different times of day and artificial light to throw off the color balance as an image comes out of the camera. So be sure the Color Temperature of your image in Lightroom  (LR) or Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) looks appropriate. This adjustment can be made in Lightroom where the color temperature shows in degrees when you move the Temp slider. Most photographers like a setting between 5800-7000 degrees. I process most of my images around 6250 degrees as my starting point. Find a color temperature that feels comfortable for you and try to stick with it to provide consistency to your style. 

Then use the tint slider to remove any aberrant colors which are inherent in your camera or were created by having your color balance off in camera. Frequently, my camera puts out images with a bit too much magenta in the sky, so I move the Tint slider to the left to correct this. If you have trouble differentiating brighter, less saturated colors, you can use the dropper tool to check your sky color or any other area in the image, then check the RGB values to see if one color is present more than what your eyes see.

Saturation is the intensity of a color. Solid red is 100% saturated as shown above. There are many ways to adjust saturation in an image and in Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw (or whatever program you use). Immediately going to the saturation slider may not be the best choice. Let’s review your options before moving forward.

The Saturation Slider.

The saturation slider affects all colors by an equal percentage in an image. Because gray has equal amounts of red, green and blue, it will not appear to be affected. Any color that is near gray will appear to to be affected a smaller amount than a color that has a higher degree of saturation. In other words, those bright colors will get significantly more affected as you move the slider right or left.

The Vibrance Slider.

The vibrance slider affects the more muted colors of an image while leaving the more vibrant colors alone. You can think of the vibrant colors as those on the red side of the color wheel. Those colors happen to be the colors found in skin tones, so the vibrance slider is particularly effective in portraits since it leaves the skin tones alone. You will notice that when you use the vibrance slider the muted tones, especially greens and blues respond to a far greater degree with just a small movement of the slider. 

The Color Mixer

The color mixer is a feature of LR and ACR. It provides Hue, Saturation and Luminance sliders for the three primary colors, the three additive secondaries (yellow, magenta and cyan, the latter renamed aqua) and adds orange and purple. Using the saturation sliders in the Color Mixer is a more selective way to target saturation adjustments. You can do this in LR or ACR.

if you have a subject that can be selected in Photoshop, you can make that selection, then take your selection into ACR and work just on that selection. Since our eye is drawn to more saturated areas, this could be effective in floral photography, for instance.

Calibration Sliders

At the bottom of your LR or ACR panel is a Color Calibration area. One slider in this area affects just the shadows, applying more green or more magenta. The three primary colors, Red, Green and Blue each have a hue slider and a saturation slider. When you move either of these sliders you are applying hue and saturation changes that involve some amounts of all three colors for all the pixels in an image. In other words, if you have a light blue sky, moving the blue saturation slider will increase the blue by increasing the amount of blue in a pixel AND decreasing the amount of red and green in pixels. You might want to download the color gamut image above and play with it in LR or ACR to see how colors are affected.

One of the last steps I use in processing many southwest landscape images is to move the blue saturation slider to the right. This effectively increases the contrast in the reds and greens, causing sandstone landscapes and foliage to “pop”. Because it also increases the blue saturation, often to a much too unnatural level, I then go into the Color Mixer and decrease the saturation of the blues back to a point that looks natural. You should take a few images and test how this slider can benefit those images. 

The adjustments in following panel of images are best seen by clicking on the individual images. Then click the "X" on the upper right to close the image.

Saturation Adjustments in Photoshop

Under the Image/Adjustments tab in Photoshop is a Hue/Saturation adjustment area. Using the dropdown selections in combination with the Hue slider at the bottom, you can target saturation adjustments for selected colors in your image. I encourage you to play with this area to understand the capabilities.

Selective Color Adjustments in Photoshop

Also under the Image/Adjustments tab in Photoshop you will find the Selective Color tab. Here you can manually add or subtract RGB values and the luminance of a color as you target specific colors in your image.

Presets

Presets are multiple adjustments that been created that can be applied with a single step. They are available in both LR or ACR. Many can be purchased from other photographer/developers. Most presets include multiple adjustments and/or masks for an image, not just saturation adjustments. You may find a saturation or desaturation preset (or you may develop your own) that fits with or defines your style. Desaturation presets are especially popular with wedding and outdoor portrait photographers. To learn more about presets, go here.

Greatest targeting with Masks

The mask tool is available in LR and ACR and with a bit less control (or more knowledge) in Photoshop. Masks allow parts a lower layer of an image to show through by concealing part of the higher layer or be or to remain hidden by revealing the higher layer of an image. There are a number of plugins or extensions such as the TK Action Panel that provide excellent masking controls in Photoshop. I will not cover those tools here, but as you get more advanced in your post processing you may want to understand and apply them since they allow even greater selectivity in your adjustments. There are many YouTube tutorials available on the use of masks.

What can a mask do?

Masks select areas of your photograph by location, luminance, hue, or saturation. Masks can be combined, that is, applied to existing masks to be even more selective. So you could select the lower half of an image, limit that selection to the shadows and also limit the selection to the darker blues in the shadows. Or you could select the subject of an image and then select just the yellow tones in the subject and then add saturation to those tones. There is a tremendous degree of control with masks. Most advanced photographers use them extensively to achieve their vision of how a finished image should appear.

Final words

With any adjustments to your images, including saturation adjustments, you are encouraged to go slow. It is always possible to increase those adjustments later. Selective adjustments generally look much better in a final image than global adjustments. The more you apply these adjustments to your images, the better your decisions will be as you create wonderful results.