How do I adjust saturation?

QUESTION

What are the ways to adjust saturation in Capture One?

ANSWER

There are several tools and methods allowing to adjust saturation in Capture One:

Exposure tool

Basic Color Editor

Advanced Color Editor

Comparison of the methods for adjusting saturation

Exposure tool

When the Saturation slider in the Exposure tool has a positive value, the saturation is increased in a non-linear way. It means that sufficiently saturated colors are not enhanced as much as the areas with low saturation. In certain third-party software products, such an "intelligent saturation" refers to as Vibrance (which is gentle to the skin tones). The advantage of such an approach is that the images look natural and do not get oversaturated.

The negative value of the Saturation slider in the Exposure tool indicates that all the colors are desaturated equally. Decreasing the saturation to its minimal value will turn an image to black and white.

Basic Color Editor

It is possible to adjust the saturation for the selected color range or for all colors using the Basic Color Editor.

1. Go to the Color tool tab.

2. Select the Basic tab in the Color Editor tool.

3. To select an individual color or color range, choose the appropriate patch or use the Direct Color Editor to pick the needed color (in that case, the patch will be selected automatically).

4. To select all the colors in the image, click on the multi-colored patch icon located on the very right of the color patch row.

5. Drag the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the chosen color. Drag the Saturation slider to the right to increase saturation.

Advanced Color Editor

1. Go to the Color tool tab.

2. Choose the Advanced tab in the Color Editor tool.

3. Use the Color Picker to select a color from the image in the Viewer.

4. Adjust the selected color range if needed by dragging the handles of the "slice".

5. Adjust the chosen color individually using the Saturation slider. Dragging it to the left to desaturate the chosen color. Drag it to the right will increase saturation. If needed, checkmark the View selected color range option so that all other colors except the chosen range one would be desaturated.

6. To adjust the saturation of all colors simultaneously, click on the + (plus) icon at the foot bar of the Advanced Color Editor. Drag the Saturation slider as required.

Comparison of the methods for adjusting saturation

In the Exposure tool, sufficiently saturated colors are not enhanced as much as the areas with low saturation. This prevents the image from looking burnt out. The adjustments done with the Saturation slider are applied to the entire image.

In the Color Editor tool, it is possible to adjust either an individual color or all colors simultaneously.

In Basic Color Editor, when the multi-color patch is selected, the saturation of all colors can be adjusted using the Saturation slider which has a similar intelligent approach to that in the Exposure tool. The image will not look burnt out as the areas with low saturation are affected more than sufficiently saturated colors.

In the Advanced Color Editor, the saturation of all colors at the same time can be adjusted as well. The Advanced Color Editor also allows better control over the saturation as it provides a broader range of values from -100 to 200, while the Basic Color Editor offers a range between -80 and 80. Unlike the approach to adjusting saturation in the Basic Color Editor, all pixels in an image are treated equally and saturation is adjusted in a linear way in the Advanced Color Editor. It means that the pixels with high saturation are adjusted in the same way as the pixels with low saturation so that an image may look oversaturated as a result.

All changes in saturation are reflected in the Histogram tool.

Exposure tool	Basic Color Editor	Advanced Color Editor

Add multiple readouts to observe the difference in the intensity of colors in the images.

In the example below, the Saturation value is set to 80 in every tool: in the Basic Color Editor for the variant in the upper-left corner, in the Advanced Color Editor for the variant in the upper-right corner, in the Exposure tool for the variants in the lower-left corner of the Viewer. The variant in the lower-right corner of the Viewer has neither any saturation adjustments nor other adjustments applied.