The Battle of the Color Tools in Photoshop

have you ever wondered which adjustment layer is better for your colors the hue saturation adjustment layer or the selective color adjustment layer or maybe for you it's not about which one is better it's about which one do i use and why do i use it well that's what we're gonna be talking about today we're actually going to pit the hsl or hue saturation adjustment layer head to head with the selective color adjustment layer and see which one is better or is one actually better is the question we need to ask ourselves so on this test image that i have here i'm going to start out just by grabbing an hsl adjustment layer and a selective color adjustment layer to get this going to do that i use my adjustment layers here at the bottom i'm just going to go ahead and click on hue saturation and the selective color adjustment layer now why this is at the bottom i do not know it should kind of be here in with some of the other color adjustment layers that we have right here but it's at the bottom so here's a selective color adjustment layer now for anybody who's ever heard the term selective color this does not necessarily mean that we're going to remove a color from the image from a let's say a black and white photo and just make the red stand out on a black and white image that is a technique called selective color where you make one color more dominant than the rest and we typically see that with black and white images but this is not what we're talking about here we are talking about selectively editing a given color that's what selective color stands for not making a black and white image and only making red show although we've all done it right i know you have i did so let's first actually just look at the similarities between the two uh what you might be most familiar with is the hsl adjustment layer it's probably the easiest one to use and one that we go to most often because it's self-explanatory we can modify the individual colors here or all the colors here within the given hue saturation or lightness now what these are are color properties the hue is basically what color is the color the saturation is how potent is that color and the lightness is how much black or white is present within that color now if we look at the selective color adjustment layer we have the individual colors here to modify but what we don't have are the color properties of hue saturation we do have lightness but it's actually called black here so if you look at these what we see here in the selective color adjustment layer is cyan magenta yellow and black if you're familiar with printing you'll see that cyan magenta yellow and black are the ink cartridges that we use so this selective color adjustment area can actually be very useful tool to remove the amount of magenta that might be an image after you look at a test print or increase the amount of cyan etc etc however it can also be used to modify the color properties of hue saturation and lightness it's just not as easy to see that now as far as the similarities between the two of course you're always going to have your blend modes that you can use your opacity and your fill as well as blend if and all those other crazy cool things that we have when it comes to working with our layers and our images beyond the fact that they can both modify our colors and we can use all of the layer tools to modify those colors there really are no other similarities between the two all right so that's where we're gonna get into our surface level differences now when we look at these the surface level differences let's look at hsl looking at hsl we can modify the master colors or all the colors in the image getting that boost in color if we were to go to our selective color we do not have a master color adjustment here right let's go back to our hsl the other surface level difference is that within the hsl adjustment layer we can click on this targeted adjustment tool and we can click on a color and it will tell us exactly what color that is now that's all fine and moment we're looking at these literal colors that are showing up on our image but what about this area here is it yellow is it orange is it red what color is that that can be hard for us to see with our eye unless we're trained in pixel technology and what color that would be my guess is that's going to be our reds let me click it and oh look at that it's our reds i didn't actually pre-plan that that's because i do this clicking on colors a lot in my images you might have thought that was yellow but that's okay that's why the hsl adjustment layer can be very helpful to identify what colors are an image the selective color adjustment layer does not have the ability to find the color that you're going to be modifying one of the other major differences that you're going to see here with selective color from hsl is that we do not have the ability to just look at the overall hue of an image the way we actually modify the hue within our image or the colors within our image is going to be by adding a percentage or subtracting a percentage of the given color within the color it sounds confusing but when you experiment with it it actually becomes second nature pretty quickly now i do have a painting background so this helps so when i'm in the color red here if i want to remove the amount of cyan that's in there our reds are going to get more red if i increase the amount of cyan that's in there our reds are going to get less red because we're mixing the complement into the color red which is going to subdue it or pull it down which is essentially what would happen when we mix pigments together in painting so here if we increase the magenta within the color red that red is going to get ultimately more magenta if we decrease it it's going to get more green if we increase the amount of yellow in the color red it's going to get more yellow if we decrease it it's going to get more blue and that's where our color starts to turn that magenta color that's how we start to get those types of hue shifts within the selective color adjustment layer what you also see here is that we have these terms relative and absolute for all intents and purposes what you want to consider with these is that absolute is going to be a very strong adjustment and relative is going to be a reduced adjustment meaning if we were to select absolute on this and increase the amount of cyan that's in there and then maybe the magenta that's in there and experiment with this we can get that color red to be more on the cyan level but if we change that to relative it's not going to be as strong of an adjustment because it's the relative values and not the absolute values now i'm not a mathematician but what i do know is that based on pattern recognition and repetition that i tend to stay in the relative area because it's a slower adjustment and when i'm working with color i want it to be slower very rarely if ever do i click the absolute value there okay so that's one thing that you're not going to see in hsl it doesn't have the ability to be relative or absolute but what it does have within a given color let's say red is the ability to change the range of that color so in our selective color adjustment layer when we're in the color red all we know is that we're in the color red what we can do here in hsl is we can actually expand where the color red is going to affect our image so watch this i'll just do a bump in in our saturation and maybe a strong reduction in our hue to make it more let's make it more of like this magenta color because it looks off right looking at this in the range section here it doesn't actually say range but this is saying that our reds have now turned this bluish kind of ultramarine magenta color now if we increase this spread here look over on the left-hand side of this image and how it is grabbing more of those magentas to then become these settings for our hue and our saturation now if we expand that range it's now moving into our blues if we expand it to this side it's moving into our yellows and we can change what the color red actually is going to affect in our photograph so we can say yes this was the color red but i need a little bit more out of it so you can boost that range a little bit to make what photoshop thinks is red more red as it goes into the yellows and it goes into the blues now this doesn't seem like it would have that much of a helpful effect when we're looking at these horrible adjustments that i did here but when we talk about this when it comes in terms of slight increases and reductions in color it gives you a nice range to pull those colors together to make the yellows more like the reds and make the magentas more like the reds so we can expand the range of the effect of what we've just done to make those colors get closer together on the color wheel as you see here on this color wheel if we were to just pull this back down to the reds like this okay and then reduce that range so it's just affecting the reds you'll see that our magentas and our yellows go back to somewhat normal right so let's go ahead and reverse that effect we'll do the same thing here make sure all that stuff is cleared out so we've discussed some of the surface level differences we've discussed some of the ways that we can control these things but now we need to kind of talk about when and where do we use these things well with hsl as i've said before it can be a very useful tool for helping you determine where the colors are in your image by using the targeted adjustment tool we can click on the color blue up here and we now know that we are only in the color blue and modifying the saturation of the color blue now you can push the saturation only so far all right i wouldn't say going any higher than maybe you know the 20s because what happens is we start to get this kind of pixelation that happens in that saturation the main thing that you need to understand here about the hsl adjustment layer is that there is no governor here i mean you can basically tell blue to become 100 saturated 100 black and get a huge shift in the hue this is not something that is very easily done in the selective color adjustment layer you can modify that hue you can push the saturation and you can also push how dark the color blue appears but there's a governor in there especially when we are using that absolute versus relative governor that we have that's already kind of built into the selective color adjustment layer i say this about the hsl because i want you to use it selectively and use it sparingly what you'll also notice here is that hsl in adobe camera raw or lightroom versus hsl in photoshop is completely different actually hsl in adobe camera or lightroom already has a pre-built in governor that will only allow your reds to get a certain degree on the hue shift so your reds might be able to get to orange but they won't be able to get to yellow your reds might be able to get to that middle magenta color but they won't be able to get to full magenta here if we go into the color red and we select that color red with the targeted adjustment tool and we move this over we can make red it's complete opposite on the color wheel towards cyan that is not something that would be possible in adobe camera or lightroom so i say that because the hsl adjustment layer is not very forgiving if you move too fast so you want to make subtle adjustments with that where selective color comes in though is that we can't really make a big hue shift for that especially when we have the relative setting checked here now we can get our reds to be closer to those yellows and we can get a huge shift out of those reds here you see that dramatically in the actual physical color of red but in the image we don't see it nearly as much as we do in the physical color of red let me go ahead and reset that there so the way selective color adjustment works is it slower yes it's definitely slower if we go into maybe the color blue the questions that we ask ourselves as we go through these things is we have cyan magenta and yellow here don't get confused by that what i want you to think to yourself is okay what color am i in i'm in the color blue do i want more cyan in the color blue if yes increase it if you want to pull some of the cyan out to make it more of a natural blue move it to the left you're pulling the you're actually pulling cyan out of the color blue by moving it to the left and making it that blue more red okay the next question you have to ask yourself is do i want more magenta in that color blue or do i want to take magenta out of that color blue and in turn add a little bit of green to it right that because we're on the opposite side of the color wheel here opposite of magenta is green opposite of red is cyan and vice versa opposite of yellow is blue that color wheel right there helps us determine exactly what that's going to look like okay now we're still in the color blue yellow do i want more yellow present in the color blue to make it less blue or do i want to remove yellow from the color blue to make it more blue okay these are painting techniques so what happens here is you can basically move these sliders and and get a mix of these colors it's almost like you've got a painter's palette right there and instead of controlling the hue and saturation based off of the actual physical hue and saturation because painters can't do that painters would have to say okay i need this blue to be more potent so let me add this or i need this blue to be a little less potent so let me add its compliment now i did say the beginning of this which one is better and are we gonna put these head to head and have them fight to the death not necessarily okay because they both have their own place in our image especially when we use them in this order as we see here here we can use these together very well for two different reasons if we take the hsl adjustment layer here actually let's look at selective color first and we say you know i'm scratching my head here what color is this right here i don't really know what that is so if i'm in selective color and i'm like is it my reds is it my yellows i don't know well this the hsl adjustment layer we can grab the targeted adjustment tool we can click on that area and say ah that's the yellows okay so if i zoom in here this area right here is going to be my yellows this area right here is going to be my rats right so that tells us okay here's my yellows here's my reds maybe i'm not going to do any adjustments to the hsl right now but if i go into the selective color adjustment layer i now know where yellow is in my photo because i use the data selection from the hsl to find out where yellow and red are in my image boom that's totally cool because now as we're going in selective color i can make a better assessment of what colors i'm going to be modifying by using that target adjustment tool in the hsl adjustment layer now it does extend a little bit further than that let's take a look at the color blue here in selective color adjustment so in the selective color adjustment if i zoom in here on the color blue and i start modifying the color blue i want to make that more blue so i'm going to remove some of the yellow from it i'm going to add some cyan there to get some of that nice coloring there and then i'll add some magenta there to make it a little bit more intense okay so that does a great job of intensifying those colors in the in the color blue area of the image right but if i go into hsl here and then i click on that color blue up there if i increase the saturation of the color blue a little bit here and then maybe darken it a little bit here i can also use that underlying data that's here in the hsl adjustment layer to push those colors a little bit more because it can be hard sometimes to refine that color so much that you're like i need some more saturation in this selective color how do i do it in the selective color adjustment layer how do i get more saturation in there well sometimes you can't get that more saturation in there but you can if you put that hsl adjustment layer underneath it and you boost that saturation a slight bit which then gives that selective color adjustment layer on top that nice smooth transition to grab those colors of those blues and get them exactly where you want them to be so think of it like this the hue saturation adjustment layer underneath the selective color adjustment layer can be the heavy lifter this one says let's make blue more intense but hey let's not make it go too intense here okay let's get that blue to be more intense and use selective color to slowly modify and refine it because it can be hard to go into the hue here of let's say the color blue and increase that and you're like i'm adding more cyan to this right because it's making it a little bit more intense we're changing the hue of those color blues but going into the selective color adjustment layer we have a lot more control over what color is creating the hue of that color blue so that's how they can be used together there's also a really cool thing that we can do here when it comes to the range of a given color let's say we go into our reds here and in the color red we're going to say let's remove some of the cyan from those reds we're actually going to zoom in here and look at the wall here so we can see what's happening we're removing some cyan from that red and look the red is starting to pop right let's add a little bit of magenta to that red and then let's boost the yellows in the color red so within the color red we were able to make those granite structures have that really nice coloring to them but we've also pushed them pretty far here so what we can do here in the hsl adjustment layer is if we click on that color which is going to be our color red and we we increase the saturation there okay we'll boost that saturation a slight bit so that selective color works a whole lot more but we increase the range of the color red right so we'll boost this over here and make that red have a bigger range into our yellows and then even a bigger selection into our color yellow and then slightly over into the magentas a little bit here as well now if we zoom in here and we look at that let's turn this on and off okay what we've done is we've effectively increased the range of where this selective color adjustment layer can affect the color red because we're saying that red is now a little bit more yellow and it's a little bit more magenta by increasing that range spread so that when we do come in and do that selective modification with the selective color adjustment layer which moves a lot slower to make much more refined adjustments we can make a better assessment of what we want our reds to look like now i'm just going to zoom in a little bit here let's see what happens when we turn this hsl off see we boosted the range for those for that color red and if we look at the before there's really not a whole lot of color back here at all the selective color did help us boost that color a little bit but that hsl adjustment just punched it up just a little bit to add a more refinement to our selective color adjustment that we did for this okay so they can be used together and actually they're probably best used together and when you start to master the hsl and selective color adjustment layer both separately and together you're gonna get better colors in your image if we zoom in back here to an image i took in the badlands look at how selective color can make a good boost for these beautiful if you've ever seen these hills in the evening in the badlands they just glow but you can't really capture it in your camera but if we go into selective color adjustment layer we can boost up those yellows and reds make a really nice refined look for how our colors should be i would say that just about every image i process goes through some level of hsl or selective color to modify and refine those colors and make them absolutely gorgeous so it's not about which one is better all right neither one of them are better than the other they're both used for very different things and actually when they're used together are phenomenal in your workflow what we've touched on here is one of my favorite topics called color grading i have an entire playlist here on color grading so click here if you'd like to learn a whole lot more about color than what we just talked about in this video and if you like this please consider subscribing i like to take very difficult things in photoshop and make them seemingly simple so that you can use them in your workflow today

Channel: f64 Academy

Views: 11,119

Keywords: Blake Rudis, f64 academy, f.64, How To, Tutorial, Photoshop, Adobe, Color Theory, Color Grading, Hue Saturation Adjustment Layer, Selective Color Adjustment layer, adobe photoshop tutorial, photoshop selective color, change color in photoshop, learn photoshop, selective color grading photoshop, adobe photoshop 2021 tutorial, how to use selective color in Photoshop, How to use HSL in Photoshop, how to use hsl in photoshop, Change HUE in Photoshop, blake rudis color theory

Id: YfYtjdp-x4c

Length: 18min 48sec (1128 seconds)

Published: Thu May 27 2021