> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ MARCH 2020[ 68 ]
TWO SUPERFAST TECHNIQUES TO
ENHANCE COLORS IN PHOTOSHOP
Whenever you think about enhancing colors (or making colors pop), one property usually comes to
mind: saturation. The problem, however, is that the Saturation slider equally amplifies the color of every
pixel, even if particular pixels aren’t meant to be very colorful. What we actually want to do is enhance
the colors of the areas proportionate to the amount of color they already have. In this article, we’ll learn
how to use both saturation masks and Selective Color adjustment layers to enhance colors naturally.Method 1: Saturation Masks
STEP 1: OPEN THE IMAGE
First, let’s open our landscape image
in Photoshop. As you can see, the
colors are dull; however, there’s a
lot of potential to make this image
more dramatic with enhanced col-
ors. If you want to follow along with
the photo we’re using here, you can
click here to license the full-resolu-
tion version from Adobe Stock, or
use the free JPEG preview by clicking
the Save to Library button to down-
load it to your Libraries panel.
If you’re using your own image, go
to File>Open, locate your image, and
then click Open, or if you’re working
in Application Frame, go to Finder
(PC: File Explorer), locate your image,
and drag-and-drop it into Photoshop.
If you downloaded the image from
Adobe Stock, you can load it from your
Libraries panel by double-clicking it.
STEP THREE:
APPLY THE HSB/HSL FILTER
Make sure that the Saturation Mask
layer is active, and then go to Filter>
Other>HSB/HSL. Choose RGB in the
first column (Input Mode), and HSB in
the second column (Row Order), and
click OK.
Note: HSB here stands for hue,
saturation, and brightness. You can
also try HSL (hue, saturation, and
lightness) for a slightly different result
and see which you prefer.STEP TWO:
CREATE A DUPLICATE
With the Background layer active in
the Layers panel, press Command-J
(PC: Ctrl-J) to create a duplicate. Dou-
ble-click on the name of this new lay-
er and rename it “Saturation Mask.”UNMESHDINDA
Effects Toolkit
Step 2Step 3©Adobe Stock/rafcio7618