Photo saturation refers to the intensity and purity of colors in an image. A highly saturated photo has vivid, rich colors, while an undersaturated photo appears muted and gray. There are several ways to increase saturation in photos to make colors pop and images more vibrant.
Increasing saturation is done by boosting the hues in an image so they become more pure and intense. This makes the colors stand out more and seem more lively. Saturating photos can really make certain elements in an image look more bold and eye-catching.
Here are some common ways photographers and graphic designers saturate photos:
Adjust Saturation in Editing Software
The easiest way to saturate photos is by using image editing software like Photoshop, Lightroom, GIMP, Pixelmator, or other apps. These programs have saturation sliders that let you manually increase or decrease the intensity of colors in photos.
The saturation slider controls the vibrance of hues from 0 to 100. Sliding it to the right saturates the image by making colors more vivid. Sliding left desaturates the photo and makes colors more muted and gray.
This is the simplest way of controlling photo saturation. Just open the image in your editor, find the Saturation slider, and drag it right to saturate the photo until you reach the desired effect. The higher the slider value, the more intense the colors become.
Use Color Lookup Adjustment Layers
In Photoshop and similar editors, you can use adjustment layers to alter color properties non-destructively. One option is a Color Lookup adjustment layer which lets you apply color grading LUTs (lookup tables) to saturate photos.
LUTs are preset color transform profiles that adjust all the colors and tones in an image. There are many creative LUTs designed specifically to highly saturate photos. After applying a vivid color lookup table, it saturates and transforms all the colors to produce a vibrant, punchy look.
Try HSL Adjustments
Most photo editors also provide HSL adjustments to alter Hue, Saturation, and Lightness values individually. While the saturation slider uniformly boosts all colors, using HSL controls lets you selectively saturate specific color ranges.
For example, you might want to only saturate the reds and yellows to make warm tones pop. Or saturate greens and aquas to emphasize cool tones. Selectively saturating parts of the spectrum with HSL adjustments provides more control over the saturation effect.
Increase Vibrance
In addition to Saturation, some editors have a Vibrance adjustment. While Saturation uniformly intensifies all colors, Vibrance only saturates more muted colors.
Boosting Vibrance saturates de-saturated colors more than already vivid colors. This prevents oversaturated colors from becoming overly bright and unnatural. Vibrance saturation enhances muted tones while maintaining nicely balanced, realistic colors.
Try Preset Filters
Many apps provide preset filters that add artistic color effects with just one click. Filters like Velvia, Provia, Cross Process, and Lomo emulate the saturated look of different film stocks and processing techniques. These filters quickly produce beautifully saturated, punchy photos with no effort.
Filters with warm color casts like Valencia and Amaro work great for saturating portraits. Cool filters like Nashville and Rise amplify landscape images. Check your app’s filters to find saturation presets that suit your images.
Saturate Selectively
For more precision, use layer masks, blend modes, and selection tools to saturate only certain parts of a photo. For example, saturate just the sky to make a sunset more fiery. Or saturate skin tones without affecting other colors. Selective saturation creates subtle, nuanced effects not possible with global adjustments.
This requires making a selection, applying saturation locally with adjustment layers or tools, then blending to restrict the effect to just the selected area. More steps, but the results can be worth it.
Increase Contrast
Increasing contrast expands the difference between light and dark areas. This intensifies all the colors and makes them appear more saturated.
Any tool that darkens shadows and brightens highlights, like Contrast, Curves, or Clarity adjustments, can also saturate colors as a secondary effect. Increased contrast and saturation often go hand-in-hand.
Shoot RAW
To maximize saturation options, shoot photos in RAW format rather than JPG. RAW files retain more color data than compressed JPGs. This gives you far greater control over saturation and color adjustments when processing RAW images.
With JPGs, any saturation effects get “baked in” and can’t be altered later. RAW lets you freely adjust saturation many different ways without degrading quality. Shooting RAW is best for serioussaturation control.
Use a Polarizing Filter
Polarizing lens filters physically saturate photos by filtering out specific light waves. This intensifies colors and boosts contrast. Rotating the filter allows you to control the saturation effect.
Polarizers work by blocking reflected light rays that can wash out colors and cause haze. With less diluted light reaching the lens, colors look more pure and saturated in the final image. Polarizers work great for saturating outdoor photos, especially landscapes and skies.
Choose Vibrant Colors
For naturally saturated photos, look for vibrant colors when composing shots. Bright reds, yellows, greens, and blues inherently contain more color intensity. Warm tones like reds, oranges, and yellows tend to saturate most vibrantly.
Subjects with solid, pure colors produce more saturated images than dusty pastels or earth tones. Seek out bold, colorful subjects against white or black backgrounds for maximum color impact.
Saturate in Camera
Many digital cameras have built-in saturation adjustments right in the settings menu. Increase the camera’s color saturation level before shooting for photos with amped up colors straight out of the camera.
Keep in mind excessive in-camera saturation can be difficult to correct later. But moderate saturation boosts are an easy way to give JPGs shot in-camera more pop. RAW shooters can control saturation much better in post.
Convert to Black and White
Here’s a counterintuitive saturation technique: converting images to black and white. Removing color amplifies contrast. When the black and white image is reverted back to color, the contrast increase indirectly saturates colors more.
Convert to B&W, increase contrast, then convert back to color. This black and white detour enhances saturation in a visually appealing way.
Avoid Overdoing Saturation
While vibrant colors are visually pleasing, take care not to oversaturate. Excess saturation produces unnatural neon colors and distorts skin tones. Subtly saturating only de-saturated colors looks more realistic.
Unless creating a stylized graphic art effect, saturated photos generally look best when colors don’t appear artificially amplified and garish.
Conclusion
Saturating photos makes them more eye-catching and intense. Global saturation adjustments provide an easy way to make colors pop. For more control, try using HSL adjustments, vibrance, polarizing filters, or converting to black and white. Increase saturation subtly for a natural look or amplify it for stark graphic art effects. Saturated colors can make any photo more vivid and lively.
References
| Source | Description |
| Adobe Photoshop | Industry standard photo editing software with Saturation and Vibrance adjustment tools. |
| Adobe Lightroom | Popular RAW photo editor with HSL and global color adjustments. |
| GIMP | Free open source image editing app with saturation controls. |
| Affinity Photo | Alternative to Photoshop with filters and HSL adjustments. |
| Snapseed | Mobile app with filters and tuning tools to simply adjust saturation. |
