Most image editing software and apps today allow you to adjust vibrance and saturation. Play around with the sliders for both settings and you may find that they do nearly the same thing. So, how do you know which adjustment option is the best for giving your photos a boost of color?
In the tutorial above, professional photographer and videographer Mike Smith gives some quick pointers on the two adjustment settings and the main difference between them. In a nutshell, saturation will adjust all the colors in your photo, while vibrance will only selectively enhance certain colors.
There are practical advantages to using vibrance over saturation, as Smith also demonstrated in his examples. He typically adds vibrance if his photos already have predominantly bright colors. But with muted scenes that could use an overall boost, saturation is best for the job.
To help you get a better understanding, he suggests experimenting with both, sliding them back and forth to see what they do to your photos. Make your adjustments subtle so you won’t end up with garish results!
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