Using the Color Tool

The Color tool in our Edit tools allows you to take control of muted or oversaturated colors with several different adjustment options, and even use color correction to fix damaged or color cast images. 

Hue, Saturation and Temperature

Step 1: Open up your image in the Photo Editor. Go to the Edit menu and find the Color tool. You’ll see three main functions within the Color tool, all of which control a slightly different aspect of your color profile.

Step 2: The Hue slider is the most sensitive of the three when it comes to achieving perfect tonal balance. Adjusting it too much can easily lead to unrealistic technicolor.

Step 3: Next we'll see the Saturation slider. Saturation controls the intensity of color within your image. Moving the slider down will cause colors to get more muted and greyscale, while moving it up will create a brighter intensity of color. Adjust this slider until you get the results you're looking for, but be mindful not to oversaturate! This can cause your image to look unrealistic and overly processed.

Step 4: Finally you'll have the Temperature slider. Sliding the Temperature adjuster towards the blue scale will add a cooler, blue tone to your image. Sliding it towards the orange side of the slider will add a warm tint by adding in brown and orange tones. If you're going for a warmer look in your photography or color-correcting an overly cool image, the Temperature slider can help.

Step 5: Click Apply to save your changes. 

Step 6: Continue adding to and editing your creation. If you're done, be sure to save your project!

Color Correcting Photos

The term color cast refers to a color imbalance from camera settings when an image was taken. Sometimes in low light, images may have an orange/yellow tint based on the white balance settings from the original image. To fix a glaring color cast, you’ll need to balance out heavy warm tinting by cooling the image down with various tool. The exact adjustments you’ll make will depend on your individual image, but this guide will go over some best practices to get the results you're looking for. You may end up needing a combination of several types of selections depending on your original image.

Step 1: Open your image in the Photo Editor and select the Color tool.

Step 2: If you find you're only slightly off and may benefit from a subtle shift in color, the Hue slider can help. The Hue slider targets all the colors in an image and adjusts them based on the overall color profile.

Step 3: Moving down Saturation can help. If your image has a vivid orange tint, a decrease in saturation will begin muting the colors that are the hottest in your color profile.

Step 4: Another useful adjustment is the Temperature slider. When dealing with color profiles that are overly hot, moving this towards the blue spectrum will add a cooling filter over the image and even out the tone.

Step 5: You may also find after moving the saturation down, you lose some contrast to the image. To help this, go to the Exposure Tool, and move around the Brightness and Contrast sliders (and maybe Highlights/Shadows) to even out the contrast.

Step 6: Click Apply to save your changes.