Vibrance and saturation

Learning goal

You will be able to choose the vibrance and saturation sliders deliberately to strengthen a photo's colors, and use the color mixer, which adjusts colors one by one. You will explain that saturation raises all colors equally, while vibrance touches faded colors more and colors that are already strong, and the skin tone range, less; in the color mixer you will change a color's hue, channel saturation and channel luminance separately; you will darken the sky and calm the grass; knowing that most skin tones sit in the same orange and red channels, you will check every face while touching those channels; and you will notice a strong color blowing out in one channel and losing its detail. You will also tell apart that how much vibrance to use is a matter of taste, but a skin moving away from its own color is a mistake.

The question

In the bike tour's selection there is a highland frame where the mist is clearing: a green meadow, a pale blue sky, a cyclist in a red jacket in the middle of the road. The frame is nice but its colors are a little dull. You raise the saturation; the sky deepens, but the meadow turns a fluorescent green, and the red jacket a red blob with no detail. When you apply the same setting to the frame you took during a break, where a light-skinned, freckled friend and a dark-skinned friend laugh side by side, one face runs to orange, the other to a reddish brown.

When you try the vibrance slider, the colors strengthen again but the faces change less. How does a photo become more vivid? In this lesson we will talk about the difference between these two sliders and the way to adjust colors one by one.

Context

When a painter wants to deepen the color of a wall, they don't add the same amount of pigment to the whole can; they look at which color they want to deepen, and how much. In editing too there are rough and fine ways to strengthen colors. Saturation and vibrance in the Basic panel touch the whole image at once; the color mixer, on the other hand, touches a single color, for example only the blue of the sky or only the green of the meadow.

In Lesson 7.5 we saw that saturation and vibrance are the most easily overdone settings and affect skin first. This lesson goes a step further: it tells why vibrance behaves more gently, how to adjust colors channel by channel, and how to bring a landscape to life without harming skin tones. How vivid a photo will be is largely a matter of preference; but a face moving away from its own color is not a preference, it is a flaw.

Simple explanation

How does vibrance differ from saturation?

The saturation slider raises or lowers the intensity of every color in the image by the same amount. A faded blue and a red that is already bright are strengthened to the same degree; that is why strong colors quickly go over the top and lose their detail. The vibrance slider, on the other hand, works more selectively: it strengthens faded colors more and colors that are already saturated less. In many programs, vibrance also tries to protect the orange and red tonal range where skin tones sit.

The skin tone range is the narrow tonal region on the color wheel, between orange and red, where the great majority of human skin tones are found. What is interesting is that light and dark skin, even though they differ in brightness and saturation, sit largely in the same region as a hue. That is why vibrance's skin protection works on different skin tones; but you shouldn't trust this protection to work flawlessly in every program and every lighting condition. After raising vibrance, you still need to enlarge and check the faces.

What does the color mixer do?

The color mixer is the panel that splits the colors in the image into channels, like red, orange, yellow, green, aqua, blue, purple and magenta, and lets you adjust each separately. Each channel has three sliders. A hue shift is moving a color on the color wheel toward a neighboring color; you can pull a yellowish meadow a little more toward green, or a sky leaning toward aqua a little more toward blue. Channel saturation raises or lowers the intensity of only that color; it is used to calm a fluorescent green or deepen a faded blue.

Channel luminance, on the other hand, changes only how light or dark that color will look. Lowering the blue channel's luminance a little darkens the sky without raising saturation and brings the clouds forward; this gives a much more natural result than rough saturation. Many programs also have a tool that, when you click on a color over the image and drag, automatically finds which channels that color is in; that way you don't need to guess the channel's name.

How do the channels relate to skin and detail?

Because most skin tones sit in the orange and red channels, touching these two channels affects every face in the frame. Lowering the orange channel's saturation can calm a flushed face, but it can also dampen the warmth of dark skin in the same frame and bring it closer to gray. Raising the orange channel's luminance shows light skin brighter, while pushing dark skin toward a tone lighter and paler than it is. Channel adjustments made to show a person's skin "more beautiful" therefore easily turn into changing their skin; you need to take small steps in the orange and red channels and check each face separately.

Another trap of strong colors is channel clipping. When the color of a bright red jacket or a flower is oversaturated, the red channel's information presses against its upper limit, and the folds of the fabric or the texture of the petals are lost and turn into a uniform blob. Even if the image doesn't look blown in the overall histogram, a single channel may be blown. Enlarging a strong color to check its texture, and pulling back that channel's saturation if needed, keeps the color both vivid and detailed.

Visual evidence

You go back to the highland frame and reset the saturation. First you raise the vibrance by a moderate amount; the faded sky and meadow strengthen, while the red jacket stays almost the same. Then you open the color mixer: when you lower the blue channel's luminance a little, the sky darkens and the clouds appear; when you lower the green channel's saturation and move its hue slightly away from yellow, the meadow stops being fluorescent and turns a natural green. When you enlarge the red jacket, the folds of the fabric can be made out; when you pull back the red channel's saturation a little, the folds become distinct.

Then you open the break frame. You raise the vibrance by a small amount and don't touch the saturation at all. You enlarge both faces: the pink in your light-skinned friend's cheeks has increased slightly, while your dark-skinned friend's skin is natural. You lower the orange channel's saturation by a small step and look again; this time your dark-skinned friend's face starts to fade. You take the step back, and instead apply a small local adjustment only to your light-skinned friend's face. In the frame both faces are in their own color: one with freckles and soft pink, the other with warm, deep brown.

Common mistakes

Summary

Saturation strengthens all colors equally and quickly pushes strong colors over the top; vibrance, on the other hand, touches faded colors more, and saturated colors and the skin tone range between orange and red where skin sits less, but it shouldn't be assumed to work with the same success in every situation. The color mixer lets you adjust each color channel's hue, saturation and luminance separately; lowering the blue channel's luminance darkens the sky naturally, and lowering the green channel's saturation calms the meadow. Because most skin tones sit in the same channels, taking small steps in those channels, checking channel clipping in strong colors, and enlarging each face separately keep the own color of every skin while bringing colors to life.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will bring a landscape and a group portrait to life without harming their colors.

1. Bring a faded landscape frame to life first only with saturation, then only with vibrance, and compare the two results.
2. In the color mixer, darken the sky by lowering the blue channel's luminance; bring the meadow or trees to a natural green by adjusting the green channel's saturation and hue.
3. Enlarge the strongest color in the frame and check whether its texture has been lost.
4. In a frame with people of different skin tones, change the orange channel's saturation and luminance in small steps; at each step, enlarge each face separately and look.

Check yourself

• Is the frame you brought to life with vibrance more natural than the one with saturation?
• What difference did using channel luminance instead of saturation make when darkening the sky?
• When you changed the orange channel, did every face in the frame stay in the color of its own skin?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. How does the vibrance slider differ from saturation?

• A) It works only in black-and-white photos
• B) It strengthens faded colors more, and saturated colors and the skin tone range less
• C) It strengthens all colors equally
• D) It changes only brightness

2. What can be done to darken the sky naturally without raising saturation?

• A) Raise the overall exposure
• B) Raise the red channel's saturation
• C) Lower the blue channel's luminance
• D) Lower vibrance to zero

3. Why is lowering the orange channel's saturation in a big step risky?

• A) Because most skin tones sit in this channel, all the faces in the frame change together
• B) The sky turns green
• C) The file size grows
• D) The clipping warning turns off

4. After strengthening a red jacket's color, the folds of the fabric disappeared. What is the likely cause?

• A) The white balance being wrong
• B) The lens being dirty
• C) The exposure being low
• D) The red channel pressing against its upper limit and losing its detail

Answers

1. B — Vibrance works selectively; it affects saturated colors and skin tones less.
2. C — Channel luminance changes only the darkness of the blue, without forcing saturation.
3. A — Light and dark skin sit largely in the same tonal region; that channel affects every face.
4. D — When a single channel blows out, that color's texture is lost, and the overall histogram may not show it.

Summary card

• Saturation raises all equally; vibrance touches faded colors a lot, strong colors and skin tones little.
• Color mixer: hue, saturation, luminance in each channel.
• For the sky, lower blue luminance; calm a fluorescent green.
• Skin tones are in the orange and red channels: small steps, check each face separately.
• Watch for channel clipping in strong colors; enlarge to check their texture.

Bridge to the next lesson

The highland frame's colors are now in place; but when you enlarge it on screen, the cyclist's face and the edges of their jacket look a little soft, and a fine grain has appeared in the darkened parts of the sky. When you raise the sharpening slider, the grain becomes more noticeable too; when you raise noise reduction, the face flattens like wax. How do you balance sharpness and noise? The next lesson talks about how sharpening and noise reduction pull against each other, and how sharpening brings out existing detail but can't rescue blur.