Point Color or Saturation? Which Tool to Use When (VIDEO)

There are always new techniques to learn whenever Adobe releases an update, with much of our attention focused upon the headline-grabbing new tools. However, it’s also important to recognize when an update includes improvements to existing tool that make them faster and more effective.

To complicate matters, whether you edit with Lightroom or Photoshop, there are typically more than one way to skin a cat, and sometimes this means understanding the difference between new and pre-existing tools so you can take the best approach for the specific task at hand. That’s the topic of this lesson; specifically with regard to Point Color vs. Saturation in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Instructor Matt Kloskowski is a pro photographer and post-processing expert who says, “I feel that Photoshop and Lightroom are WAY too complicated.” That’s why today’s tutorial, like others of his we shared in the past, is all about simplifying common  tools and techniques.

Here’s the impetus for the Matt’s 13-minute episode: “When examining the difference between Saturation and the newer Point Color tool (which also includes Saturation), I started wondering if I took my masking tools and wanted to adjust a color in an are within the frame, which of these tools should I use. As you might expect with a question like this, the answer is “it depends.”

Matt takes a unique approach to illustrating the benefits and drawbacks of the two tools in question, while demonstrating the straightforward manner in which both work. He dives in with a “geeky” theoretical illustration, followed by several creative and practical methods for achieving a perfect result.

Here’s a clue: The key difference has to do with adjusting one color like red that’s at 100%, versus dealing with all the variations of a color.” We’ll let the expert supply the rest.

There are many more straightforward instructional videos on Matt’s popular YouTube Channel, so be sure to pay a visit when you can.

We also recommend that you watch the earlier tutorial we featured with another post-processing expert who demonstrates how to enhance boring outdoor photographs by unlocking the power of Lightroom’s Color Contrast tools.