Photoshop: Hue / Saturation Adjustments

This tutorial explains the function of the Hue / Saturation adjustment, as well as examples of its use.

The Window

To create a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer, either apply it via the Layers palette go by going to Layer - New Adjustment Layer - Hue / Saturation. You can also apply Hue / Saturation directly to the image by going to Image - Adjustments - Hue / Saturation.

  • Edit - Drop-down menu where you can choose the colors to edit.
  • Master - Alters all colors of the image.
  • Reds - Alters the reds of the image.
  • Yellows - Alters the yellows of the image.
  • Greens - Alters the greens of the image.
  • Cyans - Alters the cyans of the image.
  • Blues - Alters the blues of the image.
  • Magentas - Alters the magentas of the image.
  • Hue - Alter the hue.
  • Saturation - Alter the saturation.
  • Lightness - Alter the lightness.
  • Color Dropping Tools - Select color range of the image.
  • Colorize - Select to color the entire image.
  • Preview - Preview the adjustments done to the image.
  • Color Bars - Shows colors before / after adjustment, as well as the adjustment slider.

Altering Specific Colors

In order to demonstrate the use of Hue / Saturation I will use this autumn image. Let's say I don't like autumn very much, and I'd rather make all those orange hues into a healthy green.

It's easy to figure the colors I'd have to edit would be the reds and the yellows. By applying the adjustment layer, I choosed to edit the green hues in the Edit drop-down box. By moving the Hue slider, the color will change. If you look at the lower color bar, you can easily see which colors are altered. I applied the following settings to turn the trees green:

  • Reds - Hue [ +75 ], Saturation [ 0 ], Lightness [ -9 ]
  • Yellows - Hue [ +13 ], Saturation [ +17 ], Lightness [ 0 ]

The Adjustment Slider

When altering colors, you'll notice sliders will appear on the color bars. There's two outer triangle sliders and two vertical white bars. The triangle sliders adjusts the fall-off (the feathering of the adjustment) without affecting the color range, while the vertical bar sliders adjusts the range of both color and the fall-off.

The three images below is an experiment of usage of the adjustment slider. The first image is the untouched original, while the middle image had its green hues adjusted towards red. The last image takes use of the adjustment slider, where I pulled the left triangle slider towards the yellow hues in order to include them.

Colorize

If you'd like to turn your image into a solid one-color image, simply check the Colorize box in the dialog. Move the sliders to alter the colors until you're satisfied with the result.

Masking

It's important to remember that you can mask the parts that you don't wish to appear on the image. If you're not familiar with masking, it's non-destructive erasing of an image. An example of when masking would be necessary is below. I wanted to recolor her hair, but since I had to edit the reds and yellows, her skin was affected as well. This was easily solved by applying a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer and masking the parts of her skin.

Whenever an Adjustment Layer is created, a mask is automatically applied to it. If you'd like to read more about masks, read this tutorial.

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