Next I want to talk to you about setting Hue / Saturation settings. First I want you to understand the definitions of each of these terms.

Hue: Hue is the aspect of color which is described as “red” or “yellow” etc. It is one of the three main attributes of perceived color. The other two are saturation and brightness.

Saturation: purity or strength of color, due to the absence of black, white or gray.

Brightness: Color brightness has to do with the amount of light added to a color.

Before you start using the hue / saturation tool I want to caution you with going overboard with it. Amateur photographers will often discover these tools and then overuse them so much that their photographs become unrealistic looking. This is fine if you are going for a surreal look, but if you’re looking for photographic enhancements then use this tool with extreme caution.

The purpose of the tool is to alter the vibrancy of the colors in the photograph. You can choose to either enhance dull colors or artificially dull bright colors. Both choices can have some interesting visual effects. Take a look at the following photograph for example.

Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, and Sharpness

Background

At first glance, it might seem that doing an article on the four most common image controls would be a waste of time. After all, brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness are often thought to be the simplest controls as they've been around as long as the color TV. People often overlook the fact that all four are related, however, and changing any one of them can change the other three. Do you know how they are related and how you are changing the balance of brightness, contrast, saturation, and sharpness by only changing one of the three parameters? Let's take a look.

Brightness

Brightness is generally thought to be the simplest in concept. Just make the image brighter or darker by a specified amount, right? First we must distinguish between true brightness and something else called