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About this lesson

The difference between these two is useful to keep in mind when editing photos that contain people, as opposed to landscape, or architectural photos.

Exercise files

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Quick reference

Topic

The difference between the effects ‘Vibrance’ and ‘Saturation’, demonstrating how the are very similar, except that ‘Vibrance’ is better for human subjects, as it leaves skin tones looking more natural.

When to use

The difference between these two is useful to keep in mind when editing photos that contain people, as opposed to landscape, or architectural photos.

Instructions

Bringing up the effect as a non-destructive adjustment layer

  • At the bottom of the layer panel choose ‘Vibrance’ from the ‘layer adjustment’ menu

What each control does

  • Here you will have two controls
    • Vibrance
    • Saturation
  • Both controls boost the richness of the color in the image.
  • The saturation boosts all of the colors in the image
  • But vibrance leaves out the warmer hues that are associated with skin tone
  • Therefore the vibrance is good to use when you want to boost the color in the image, but don’t want the people to become too ‘orange'
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  • 00:05 Hey everyone, Howard Pinsky here with another Photoshop tip for all of you.
  • 00:08 In today's video, we're going to be discussing the difference between
  • 00:11 vibrance and saturation.
  • 00:13 Now to many users, increasing both the vibrance and the saturation
  • 00:17 appears to boost the vividness the color. But what exactly
  • 00:20 is the difference between the two, and when should each be used?
  • 00:24 Let me go ahead and fill you in on the difference. Now, saying that both the
  • 00:27 vibrance and the saturation
  • 00:29 boost your colors vividness wouldn't exactly be incorrect,
  • 00:33 but there is one key difference that you should be aware of, which will define
  • 00:36 which adjustment you ultimately use.
  • 00:38 Let's take a look at both the adjustments. For these examples, we are
  • 00:41 going to be using the vibrance adjustment layer, which you can add at the bottom of
  • 00:45 your Layers panel.
  • 00:46 This will not only ensure that you are working non-destructively, but we're also going to
  • 00:49 have access to both the vibrance and the saturation adjustment.
  • 00:53 Let's go ahead and start off by increasing our saturation.
  • 00:56 You are going to notice that as I drag the slider to the right the colors become a
  • 00:59 lot more vivid.
  • 01:01 The greens, the blues, and the oranges are all equally boosted.
  • 01:04 Now, let's take a look at the vibrance. Let me put saturation back to 0,
  • 01:08 and this time I will increase the vibrance all the way to the right.
  • 01:11 And when I do that, some of you may see a difference and some may not.
  • 01:15 Both adjustments appeared to boost the vividness of the colors.
  • 01:18 But vibrance is usually not as strong, and there's a very good reason why.
  • 01:22 Vibrance works to avoid skin tones,
  • 01:25 which are typically yellow and orange. So if we take a look at the house in this
  • 01:29 image, when I increase the vibrance,
  • 01:30 it really doesn't change too much because it
  • 01:33 contains tones that can be found in skin.
  • 01:34 Now, vibrance will still boost the vividness of
  • 01:38 your greens and your blues, but when it comes to colors like oranges and yellows,
  • 01:42 those are not going to be as strong as they would be with saturation.
  • 01:45 Now, let's go ahead and look at another image that contains people.
  • 01:48 This may give you a little bit of a better understanding. So, once again, I'm
  • 01:52 going to go ahead and add a vibrance adjustment layer,
  • 01:55 and let's start with the saturation. You're going to notice that as I
  • 01:58 increase the saturation,
  • 01:59 the skin tones are starting to look very unnatural. They're becoming too vivid and
  • 02:04 too orange, which you probably don't want in your image.
  • 02:06 So, now let me go and reset saturation, and now on the increase the vibrance.
  • 02:11 This time, we still see the blues and greens being boosted,
  • 02:14 but the skin tones - the oranges and yellows - are not being affected
  • 02:18 as much, which leaves us with a much more natural result.
  • 02:21 So the bottom line is, if you're working with images that contain people
  • 02:25 and you need to increase the vividness of your colors but avoid the skin tones,
  • 02:29 you're definitely going to want to use the vibrance adjustment.
  • 02:32 Now, it may not be as strong as saturation might be,
  • 02:34 but your skin tone will look a lot more natural.
  • 02:38 On the other hand, if you are working with an image that does not contain skin tones
  • 02:40 and you really want to boost your colors as much as possible, then a saturation
  • 02:44 adjustment may be what you're looking for.
  • 02:46 And that's a quick look at the difference between vibrance and
  • 02:48 saturation in Photoshop.
  • 02:50 I hope that helped you out.

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