Change Color in Photoshop with Hue Saturation – Photoshop 2021

Learn to change color in photoshop with Hue Saturation adjustment layer. Use the On-Image adjustment tool to target specific colors without making a selection. Use the colorize feature to change the mood of a photo.

Today I’m going to show you how to use the hue and saturation dialogue in Photoshop. Now it’s a simple tooL but there are a lot of options that come in handy when using hue and saturation. We’re gonna show you how to edit colors globally as well as specific colors and change just those. We’ll also show you the colorize feature.

So let’s get right into using the hue and saturation adjustment layer. So the best way to use hue and saturation is to come down here to the bottom right to the adjustment layers and choose hue and saturation. Now right up here at the top where it comes in by default, this dropdown right here says “Master”.

Adjust Hue/Saturation globally – Change Color In Photoshop

And so when you’re adjusting the hue you can see that it is a global adjustment, making these changes to the whole image. Same with saturation is a global adjustment. And the lightness, well it just makes it really bright or really dark. Not real helpful when you’re using the master in the dropdown. So let’s see how we can target certain colors using the hue and saturation.

Target Colors with Dropdown – Change Color In Photoshop

So we have this example here. I’m going to add the hue and saturation adjustment layer, and this time I’m gonna use the dropdown.

If I wanna target the reds I can select the red. I can adjust the saturation. I can even adjust the lightness of that red. I can make it darker, make it lighter. I can change the hue of it a little bit, too, but that’s red so I don’t wanna change it too much. I can change my yellows, add more saturation. Greens. You know, you can always change the hue and lightness. So that’s one way that you can target.

And there’s something to be aware of with this hue and saturation adjustment. When I come back in and say I want to change any of these colors, by default master is selected. I just adjusted the reds, the greens, yellows. But what you have to do is you have to go back in to, like for instance reds. You can see now there is my adjustment, my yellows, all the things that I changed. So you have to be aware of when you come back into your hue and saturation adjustment layer that by default it’s going to say master, and you’re not going to see all the adjustments that you made before. Also down here at the bottom is the reset for all these adjustments. If I reset that, all the adjustments that I’d made are zeroed out.

And there’s another way that you can do targeted adjustments. Let’s see how that works. Up here on the top we have something that is the On-Image Adjustment or Targeted Adjustment. First of all what you see that there are arrows that are going this way and that way, so that means that we’re gonna use this tool and we’re gonna drag sideways to make the adjustment.

So if I click here, those are yellows, and if I drag right and left, I’m adjusting the saturation. If I click on the reds here it says up there that I am adjusting the reds, and again, moving the hand or the finger left and right is my saturation. Now if I want to use that same tool, the targeted adjustment or on image adjustment, hold down the command or control and now I’m adjusting the hue. The hue is sliding now left and right, so I’m adjusting those reds and adjusting the hue by holding down the command or control. If I lift up and slide right and left I’m adjusting the saturation.

So I can go through here and click on all these colors and either adjust the saturation or the hue. And so that’s a way to target with the on image adjustment or the targeted adjustment tool.

So I had this landscape photo here. We have all this red back here and I wanna make sure I reset all this. Click on my targeted adjustment tool and drag, and I am increasing my saturation. Hold down the command or control and now I’m changing the hue a little bit. I can adjust the lightness, make it, or I’m gonna make this a little bit darker. There’s before and there’s the after.

When using this targeted adjustment tool, if any of the reds here in the foreground I really didn’t want, that I just wanted to concentrate mostly on those rocks, I could click on a layer mask, paint with black on my brush tool. I could paint everywhere in the foreground where I did not want any of those red changes. So I targeted my reds in the rocks back there. That’s before and there’s the after.

How to Target a Specific Color – Change Color In Photoshop

So now let’s use hue and saturation to hone in and really target specific colors. Let’s have a little fun with this guy here, this chamaeleon. They can change colors if they want to whenever they want to, and so can we. So let’s add a hue and saturation adjustment layer. I’m gonna use my targeted adjustment tool, and we wanna target say these yellows here in his tail.

And now we have a different tool to work with. Down here we have these adjustment sliders, and their corresponding color wheel values in degrees appear in between the color bars. Right here in the middle, this inner vertical bar is our color range that we’re gonna be working with. The two outer triangles sliders show where the adjustments on the color range fall off, so it’s a feathering. And the two bars up here, well the top bar of the slider shows you the colors you choose or target and the bottom slider shows the color you’re going to turn in to or the result.

So in order to hone in on those colors, you’re gonna wanna bring up the hue and the saturation all the way so that you can see. And you’re gonna need to narrow the slider right here. And you can even narrow the inner slider a little bit. Okay, and now it’s saying the top slider or the top bar is the color you chose and the bottom slider is the color it’s going to change into. So you can adjust these colors. So you’re watching the image, and this bottom color is what is actually selected so that’s what you would watch for when you’re trying to select that particular color. So if I bring all these sliders back to zero and then adjust my hue, you can see I am changing that selected color in just the areas that I want to.

And we’re gonna make him, those yellows actually turn into a lot of green. There is the before, there is the after. So we targeted that yellow that was mostly in his tail. I’m gonna use my targeted adjustment tool and I wanna change these reds here. Same as before, I just increase my hue and my saturation, narrow my colors. And so right there I’ve selected the reds. You can see the areas here, those stripes that were red, they’re now the same color as the lower part of this bar. That’s what I look for. Zero these out and I’m changing my reds that I targeted. So that is targeting to a specific color. Before, after.

How to Colorize Using Hue/Saturation – Change Color in Photoshop

Now let’s show you how to use the colorize option in the hue and saturation adjustment layer. So we have this image here that already has a lot of color in it, but you can actually do some creative things with hue and saturation colorize. Let’s see what we can do here. So I’m gonna come down here to the adjustment layers and choose hue saturation.

Over here on the left is the properties. If I click on colorize this is what colorize does initially. It changes your image to black and white and then applies one color. So I can play with the hue and bring that to something like 33. Bring my saturation up, something like that. Brighten it up a little bit with the lightness, and as you can see it’s got a different cast over it. It’s changed the mood of the image. But this is what colorize can do. You can get creative with it.

What I can also do on this hue saturation adjustment layer is I can change the opacity and bring in some of the color of the image below, something like that. So if I turn this on and off you can see that I added a different cast and brought in some of the colors that were in the original layer below and made it a totally different photo. And so you can make a creative choice like that. Change Color In Photoshop

See the previous blog article here 👉 https://charlescabrera.com/color-grading-in-photoshop-2021/

See my photography website here 👉 https://www.charlescabreraphotography.com