The DIFFERENCE Between Saturation and Vibrance in Photoshop – COLOR ENHANCING Tutorial Video
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Vibrance vs saturation in Photoshop comes down to two adjustment layers that both boost color intensity, but only one protects skin tones from banding.
Key Takeaways
- The Vibrance adjustment layer protects skin tones and already-saturated colors, while the Saturation slider raises every pixel by the same amount.
- Pushing the Saturation slider to its maximum causes color banding, especially in skin tones and already-saturated areas.
- The Hue/Saturation and Vibrance adjustment layers both have a slider named Saturation, but lowering it does not give the same result.
- The Hue/Saturation adjustment layer uses the HSL color mode, so removing saturation always turns a color into a gray based only on its brightness.
- The Vibrance adjustment layer uses the HSB color mode, which mimics how the human eye perceives brightness, so blue turns a darker gray than yellow even at equal brightness.
- In most cases, Vibrance is the safer choice for adding saturation to a photo.
Table of contents
What You Will Learn
- How the Saturation slider in a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer affects every pixel in an image
- How the Vibrance adjustment layer protects skin tones and already-saturated colors
- How to read HSB values for a color in the Info panel
- Why the Hue/Saturation and Vibrance adjustment layers give different results from a slider with the same name
- The difference between the HSL and HSB color modes
Requirements
Before you start
- Photoshop 2020 (version 21.2 or later) or the current version
Tutorial Image
You can get the tutorial image from Adobe Stock.
The Difference Between Saturation and Vibrance in Photoshop
Create a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
On the Properties Panel, you will see three sliders.
Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Obviously this uses the HSL color mode, which we will discuss further later in the tutorial.
The Hue/Saturation adjustment layer can also target and shift specific colors with visual swatches instead of only raising or lowering saturation.
By increasing it to its maximum of +100, all the color of the image will increase intensity.
Note: Since the Saturation slider increases the intensity on all pixels in equal amounts, it creates banding of colors and over-saturates skin tones. This is not the best solution for making the colors in your photos more vivid.
Next, take a look at the Vibrance adjustment layer.
From the Properties panel, adjust the Vibrance by increasing the slider up to +100.
Tip: A Vibrance value of about 75 often looks more natural than pushing the slider all the way to 100, while still adding plenty of saturation.
Right away, you’ll notice how the colors look more vivid. They do not reach the point of oversaturation as what happened by increasing the Saturation to the maximum in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
Even if the red top is already saturated and you increase Vibrance to the maximum you’ll notice minimal banding.
Even with the Vibrance set to the maximum value, the skin still looks great because it protects skin tones and already saturated pixels.
For a more precise way to check skin color, see how the Vectorscope finds and fixes skin tone problems in Camera Raw.
Tip: In most cases, the Vibrance adjustment layer will be the best option for adding saturation to your photos.
Saturation vs. Saturation – Same Name Different Results
Both the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and the Vibrance adjustment layer have a “Saturation” slider, but they do not give you the same results.
If you drag the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer to bring the Saturation slider to the minimum at -100,
you’ll see how the bars with the color gradients completely turn into gray, and now all look the same.
The reason for this is that the brightness is the same all across the board, but the difference is only with the hue and saturation.
When the hue and saturation are removed from the equation, Photoshop makes all the grays the same.
This adjustment layer uses the HSL color mode. HSL was created in a time when you had to specify colors numerically, and it isn’t particularly representative of how the human eye actually views color.
Photoshop’s blending modes use similar hue, saturation, and luminosity math to combine layers.
If you do the same with the Vibrance adjustment layer, decrease the Saturation slider to the minimum at -100.
You’ll notice that there are varying shades of gray.
The Vibrance adjustment layer uses the HSB color mode, which is a system designed to interpret how the human eye perceives color.
To the human eye, blue always looks darker than yellow even when it has the same saturation and brightness levels.
When the image is desaturated this perception is kept in the black and white image, making blue darker than yellow.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Saturation slider in a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer raises the intensity of every pixel by the same amount. The Vibrance adjustment layer raises intensity too, but it protects skin tones and pixels that are already saturated.
The Saturation slider increases every pixel’s color intensity equally, with no protection for skin tones or already-saturated pixels. Pushed near its maximum, this creates visible banding, especially in skin and in colors that were already vivid.
Yes. The Vibrance adjustment layer raises the saturation of muted colors more than already-saturated colors, including skin tones. That is how it avoids the oversaturation and banding the Saturation slider can cause.
The Hue/Saturation adjustment layer uses the HSL color mode, for hue, saturation, and lightness. Removing all saturation in HSL always produces a shade of gray based only on the color’s brightness.
The Vibrance adjustment layer uses the HSB color mode, for hue, saturation, and brightness. HSB is based on how the human eye perceives brightness, not on the numeric brightness value alone.
Both sliders share the name Saturation, but they belong to different color modes. The Hue/Saturation layer’s HSL mode and the Vibrance layer’s HSB mode calculate gray differently when saturation drops to zero.
In most cases, the Vibrance adjustment layer is the better choice. It boosts color without the banding and oversaturated skin tones that the Saturation slider can cause at high values.
The Vibrance adjustment layer’s HSB color mode reflects how the human eye perceives brightness. To the eye, blue always looks darker than yellow at the same numeric brightness, so HSB carries that difference into the desaturated result.
Vibrance vs Saturation in Photoshop: Final Thoughts
Vibrance and Saturation both raise color intensity, but they are not interchangeable. The Vibrance adjustment layer protects skin tones and already-saturated colors, while the Saturation slider in the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer boosts every pixel by the same amount.
The two adjustment layers use different color modes for their own Saturation sliders. Hue/Saturation uses HSL, and Vibrance uses HSB, which is why lowering each slider produces a different shade of gray.
Watch the full video above to see both adjustment layers tested side by side, and comment on the video if you have a question.
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Next, learn how to target specific colors with the new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.
