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What Is Color Saturation?
Color saturation refers to the intensity of color in an image. As the level of saturation increases, colors appear to be more pure. As the level of saturation decreases, colors lose their intensity, gradually becoming more pale and diluted.
A highly saturated image has rich and bright colors, while an image with low saturation will veer towards a scale of grey. Color saturation is one of the five main color properties, along with hue, chroma, brightness, and value.
Key Takeaways
- Color saturation can alter the vividness of colors in an image.
- It’s one of the main properties of color and can be adjusted up or down.
- Higher saturation creates a stronger, more vivid color. Lower saturation shifts towards a scale of grey.
- Artists use saturation to create different moods and effects.
- Image editing software, digital cameras, televisions, laptop and desktop monitors, and popular productivity tools like MS Office all have built-in controls that let you change color saturation.
How Does Color Saturation Work?
Color saturation determines how a given hue will appear in certain lighting conditions. For example, a wall painted with a solid color will look different during the day than it does at night.
Because of the light, the wall’s color saturation will change over the course of the day. The color hasn’t actually changed, just the saturation, but the human eye will perceive the color differently as a result.
When color saturation is zero, what you will see is a shade of gray. However, saturation does not define how light or dark a color is. Although many saturated colors tend to be lighter than less saturated ones, adding white to the latter will increase their brightness until both values match. In fact, the brightness of the color is controlled by the amount of white in the hue.
What Is Saturation in Color Theory?
Color saturation features prominently in color theory, which is used by artists and designers to achieve color harmony, or the mixing and arranging of colors in ways that are pleasing to the human eye. Color theory defines the different ways that the hues on a color wheel or color palette can be manipulated to satisfy the mind’s preference for visual balance.
Along with hue, brightness, value, and chroma, saturation is a property of color that can be adjusted, making it more or less vivid in relation to the other colors in an image.
Saturation, Hue, Brightness, Chroma & Value
The term hue refers to the color of the image itself, while saturation describes the intensity (or purity) of that hue. When color is fully saturated, it is considered to be in its purest or truest hue.
Level of the intensity of a light source. Once that level has been set, color saturation can be expressed as a percentage, ranging from 0% (grayscale) to pure color (100%).
A low percentage of saturation will look washed out or softer than the true (100%) color. Primary colors red, blue, and yellow are considered the true color versions as they are fully saturated.
The word saturation is sometimes used interchangeably with chroma. However, the two terms have slightly different meanings.
While chroma defines the brilliance of color in absolute terms according to the Munsell Color System, saturation measures a color relative to pure gray. In nearly all instances, the practical difference or visibility to the naked eye is negligible.
Saturation refers to how strong or weak a color appears to be. A high saturation equates to how strong a color appears, while a low saturation will make the color appear weak or washed out.
The value of color measures how light or dark a color is. A color that appears light has a high value, while a color that appears darker has a low value.
How Can You Change Color Saturation?
All graphics and image software tools have commands that enable you to manipulate color properties like saturation, hue, and lightness. These can be applied to an entire image or to specific areas or color components within it.
These commands often take the form of sliders which can be easily shifted left and right with movements of a computer mouse until the desired saturation level is achieved. Computer monitors and television screens also have built-in controls that allow you to raise or lower the color saturation.
Color Saturation Applications
Digital image editing programs and AI art generation tools enable pinpoint control over color saturation through the use of gradients and tools such as color saturation matrix.
Digital cameras allow you to assign color saturation settings before an image is captured. Adjusting camera saturation slightly upward, for example, can make photographs ‘pop’.
Artists also use color saturation in traditional hand-rendered media like painting and drawing. Because colors become less saturated the further the observer is from an object due to a phenomenon known as atmospheric perspective, painters use progressive color de-saturation to create the illusion of depth. They achieve this by making the colors of distant objects gradually less saturated while keeping those in the foreground bright and vivid.
Color Saturation Pros and Cons
- Raising the saturation in an image can make the colors more vibrant and impactful
- Lowering the saturation allows users to change the mood or emotional impact of an image
- Raising saturation can amplify the noise or pixel flaws and overlaps in an image, making it appear ‘overcooked’
- Too much saturation can also amplify the color of shadows in an image, making them appear unnatural
The Bottom Line
Color saturation refers to changes in a color’s definition, giving it more (or less) intensity. Higher saturation provides a more vibrant color and lower saturation provides a desaturated or muted color.
It determines how pure color appears and is used by artists and designers to alter the overall composition and mood of images.
