Adjusting the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness in Unison

Use the Hue/Saturation/Lightness command to shift all colors in an image and change their strength and lightness. Here’s how the command works:

Important: To apply this command to a selection, the image must be a 16 million (24-bit) color image (otherwise the command is applied to the entire image). To increase the color depth of an image, see Increasing the Color Depth of an Image.

To use the Hue/Saturation/Lightness command:

  1. To limit the correction to a specific area, make a selection in the image. See Using the Selection Tools.

  2. Do one of the following:

  3. To modify the image pixels directly, choose Adjust >Hue and Saturation > Hue/Saturation/Lightness.

  4. To create an adjustment layer, choose Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation/Lightness. For information on adjustment layers, see Using Adjustment Layers.

  1. In the Edit drop-down list, choose the color range to adjust. To edit all colors simultaneously, choose Master. To edit a specific color range, choose Reds, Yellows, Greens, Cyans, Blues, or Magentas.
    The color rings represent the colors in the image. The outer ring represents the original values and the inner ring represents the adjusted values. If you choose a specific color range to edit, a control ring is added between the inner and outer rings where you can change the color range that you adjust.

  2. To turn the image into a duotone (two-color) image, mark the Colorize check box. The image turns into a greyscale image (if you have previews or proofing on). You can now select a hue and adjust the saturation and lightness values to colorize the image.

  3. If you are editing a specific color range (rather than the Master mode), you can change the color range that you adjust using the control ring:

  4. To set the range width, drag the two outer points on the control ring, which mark the beginning and end of the adjustment area.

  5. To change where the adjustment builds to full effect, drag the two inner bars. In the area between the two inner bars, the adjustment is in full effect.

  6. To move the adjustment area, drag the white circle.

  1. To change the hue, drag the Hue slider until the colors appear as you want them. You can also type a value in the Hue edit box.
    The hue value is not on the typical hue scale of 0 to 255. Instead, the value is the number of degrees of rotation around the 360 color wheel from the pixel’s original color. A positive values indicates a clock-wise rotation and a negative value indicates a counter-clockwise rotation. For example, when the Hue value is at 180, blue becomes yellow and green becomes magenta.

  2. Drag the Saturation slider up to increase the saturation or drag it down to decrease the saturation. Values can range from -100 to 100; at zero the saturation is unchanged.

  3. Drag the Lightness slider up to increase the lightness or drag it down to decrease the lightness. Values can range from -100 to 100; at zero the lightness is unchanged.

  4. Click OK.

Note: You can use the Hue/Saturation/Lightness command or the Colorize command to create a duotone image (a greyscale image with one color added). For more information on duotones, see Colorizing Images.

 

Related Topics

Adjusting Color Channels

Changing the Color Balance of Shadows, Midtones, and Highlights

Changing the Overall Color Balance

Correcting Colors by Setting Black and White Points