Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Saturation


Saturation has a lot of similarity with contrast. However, saturation will increase the separation between colors instead of increasing the separation between the shadow and highlight. As a matter of fact, if the specific part of an image has its own saturation and some parts have no saturation at all, then an increase in saturation will lead to the increase in contrast, brightness and sharpness of the part which has its own saturation as well. On the other hand, the contrast, brightness and sharpness of part having no saturation will not change at all. Similarly, a change in saturation will have a more noticeable effect on the vibrant color and less on dull color or colors that are almost neutral. The reason for such phenomenon is that color saturation can be changed only when there is color saturation to work with in the first place.


In all, changing one of these four controls really affects the other three most of the time. Keep in mind that you need to strike a balance between them; otherwise, the image will make people feel uncomfortable.