Adjusting color intensity with Vibrance

In this movie, we're going to increase the saturation levels of the photo filter image and reduce the saturation levels of the color balance image using a command called Vibrance, and notice that my Photo Filter adjustment layer is selected here in the Layers panel. You can once again apply Vibrance as an adjustment layer. So I'll bring out my Adjustments panel, and I'll click on this V icon for Vibrance, and that switches me once again to the Properties panel. Now let me go ahead and scoot the image over so we can see it.

You know how saturation works. If you crank the Saturation value up, you will get more garish colors. And if you reduce the Saturation value to its absolute minimum, you will end up with a grayscale image. I'm going to go ahead and reset that value to 0 for now. Vibrance is more selective. It weights the low saturation colors more than the high saturation colors. So in other words, if you increase the value, you're going to increase the intensity of the low saturation colors more than those of the high saturation colors.

If you reduce the Vibrance value, you are going to take away vibrance from the low saturation colors, and the only colors that will remain are those that were high saturation in the first place. I'm going to go ahead and take that value up to 50 and then I will tab to the Saturation value and press Shift+Up arrow a couple times to take it to 20. So we end up with a much more vivid colors, and I might be going a little bit too far with this effect, but I want the difference to be obvious.

So I'll hide the Properties panel for a moment. This is the final image without the saturation boost, and this is what it looks like when we apply a combination of vibrance and saturation. Now let's scoot things over so we can see the color balance image and I'll click on the Color Balance adjustment layer to make it active, and this time around, I'll apply Vibrance using the black white icon down here at the bottom of the Layers panel. But first press the Alt key or the Option key on the Mac, and then click and hold on that icon and choose the Vibrance command, and this will force the display of the New Layer dialog box.

I don't really care about the name. However, you do want to turn on Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask. That way the Vibrance adjustment will affect the color balance image only. Now I will click OK and this time I'm going to take the Vibrance value down to let's say -15 should do the trick. We don't need to touch the Saturation value. And now, I'll go ahead hide the Properties panel and that ends up giving us some more muted, natural colors. Now let's compare all the images. I'm going to press Shift+F to switch to the Full Screen mode, and then Command+0 or Ctrl+0 to zoom out so that we can take in all four of the images.

And where this image is concerned, the Auto Tone and the Photo Filter adjustments end up looking pretty similar to each other, whereas the Auto Color and Color Balance adjustments end up resembling each other quite closely as well. If I were to select any one of them, I would probably go with the Color Balance adjustment even though it was the most difficult to pull off. However, I stress every photograph is different and your results are going to vary depending on the character of that photograph, which is why in the next movie, we're going to leave Photoshop for a moment and I will show you what is possibly the most reliable method for correcting color casts inside Camera Raw.