Photoshop’s New Hue/Saturation Tool is a Gamechanger (VIDEO)

Adobe has updated Photoshop’s frequently used Hue/Saturation tool, and this tutorial from PHLEARN explores the myriad of improvements in less than 10 minutes. As you’ll see, this latest version is quicker and easier to use, delivers precise results, and features a bold, new, intuitive interface.

Instructor Aaron Nace is the brains behind the PHLEARN YouTube channel that’s billed as “the number one Photoshop and Lightroom online resource.” In this quick episode Nace provides his recommendations for employing the revised options to fine-tune hues, enhance color vibrancy, and more.

Nace summarizes today’s lesson like this: “We’ll show you its user-friendly interface and powerful capabilities, and then demonstrate how to select and modify the colors within your photos.” There’s a link in the description beneath the video for downloading his sample image so you can follow along and make the Hue/Saturation adjustments yourself as the simple steps are explained.

You’ll see that a lot of the functionality resembles what we had before, but the visual representation is dramatically different. Not only that, but Nace explains how the tools are much easier to use. The sample shot is full of vivid tones, and Nace demonstrates how you can quickly change these engaging colors to create a variety of attention-grabbing effects.

The starting point is creating a new layer and choosing the Hue/Saturation option from a dropdown menu that appears. Then take a look at the Layer panel on the right of the screen where you can double-click a tab to access Photoshop’s newly designed Properties panel.

You’ll immediately notice a row of predefined colored circles. Then it’s a simple matter of clicking on the appropriate button to adjust those specific tones. Nace explains why this approach is referrable to the dropdown menu you’ve used in the past. Even better is the fact that these quick-access options are available in the contextual taskbar  so that they’re readily available at any time during your edit.

The remainder of the video illustrates exactly how to navigate and employ the new Hue/Saturation tool for a variety of purposes. Nace starts from the top and works his way down, beginning with a selection of easy-to-use presets. like Cyanotype, Increase Saturation, Sepia, and others. It’s important to note that choosing the Default option rather than a preset will affect all of the colors in an image at once.

At this point we’ve barely scratched the surface of everything you’ll learn in this must-see video. Once you get the hang of it (it doesn’t take long) you’ll have a much a much easier time adjusting colors to perfection with any image you shoot.

The PHLEARN YouTube channel is a great source of information about all things Adobe, so be sure to take a look when you have time to explore.

We also recommend watching the Photoshop tutorial we featured recently with another post-processing expert who demonstrates what he says are, “five HUGE image-editing mistakes that are very easy to fix.”