Vibrance vs Saturation

Quick reference

• 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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