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Adobe Photoshop CC - Essentials Training

How to enhance colors in Photoshop using vibrance

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hey there, in this video we're looking to enhance colors; I hate saying the word make colors pop but that's kind of how we do it, which is trying to kind of lift some of the colors. So we're going to take this image that we've been working on, and we just kind of richened it up, especially the background stuff. This image here, ready, 1, 2, 3 Colors are definitely enhanced, and maybe some popping going on. 

Now this technique is, after Levels is one of the first things I do. So, step 2 in my fixing up my images is Level's first, which we did in the previous video, then I look at Vibrance. Just to kind of lift and raise some of the colors without going too far. We might have gone a little too far in this image but that's okay, let's learn how to do it now in Adobe Photoshop. 

To get started we're going to open up two files from that same folder called 02 Color. I've got open 'Vibrance 01' and 'Vibrance 02'. Vibrance 02 is from an old magazine. So we only have Vibrance 01 to start with. Now what we're going to do is, in our Adjustments panel we're going to use this one here. It's like a kind of a V with a gradient in the middle. It's the vibrance adjustment, click on that. Now I just mentioned that Vibrance is a good replacement for saturation in most cases. So if you have delved in Photoshop before, and you used the Hue & Saturation slider-- Saturation's fine, but Vibrance is definitely better. 

Why is Vibrance better, in my opinion? Vibrance, what it does is, it looks at the image. Let's say, the shoes are quite red already but there's kind of colored boards in the background, they're quite washed out. So what Vibrance does is, watch this, if I drag out Saturation to the top, kind of to get this blue color in the background here, kind of popping this red, has to be over saturated and gets too much, so I'm going to turn that back to 0. 

What happens with Vibrance, watch this, when I drag this up you'll notice that the blue in the background gets better but it leaves the already saturated colors alone. So generally it's just a really good-- I don't normally drag it up this high. I've got this example, just because we've been using this already. Let's have a look at the Vibrance 02. So, same thing. I'll go to my 'Adjustments' panel, then go to 'Vibrance Watch what happens when I drag up the Saturation. Kind of, like, I'm going way too high, I'm going all the way up to 100, but you see, the green start getting quite strong and the blues come out of here. Let's go down, up, down, up, but the problem is, these colors that already had quite a strong color in them, they start becoming kind of, I don't know surreal, hyper real, just a bit too saturated. So, let's leave this here and crank up this Vibrance. 

You'll notice that the greens are the leaves. You might not notice, so I've gone up to 100, and I'm going to knock the Eyeball on and off. You'll notice that the blue in here really came on strong, which is cool, and the leaves got a warmer kind of green in there, but you'll notice, the bag down here or at least the colors in here, in the, I'm going to call it the scarf, they get a little bit more but not as much as these. So it's more like the already saturated colors just get a little tweak, and the ones that are just quite weak in terms of the color saturation kind of, going to lift it up to match some of the more saturated colors. 

All right, that is going to be it for Vibrance, you can use both of them Vibrance and Saturation to go completely overboard. That is it. All right, I will see you in the next video. Goodbye, Vibrance.