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Inspiring
January 14, 2016
Open for Voting

P: Desaturate Highlights and Shadows

  • January 14, 2016
  • 13 replies
  • 3089 views

In retouching there are many times when the highlights (or shadows) are contaminated by colours that should not be there. An example would be interior shots where different light sources were used (say daylight and tungsten), or where a wide angle lens has caused magenta/green shading on a white wall. It would be incredibly helpful to be able to select highlights/midtones/shadows and selectively adjust saturation. If, say, the split-toning slider could slide to the left to decrease saturation that would do the job!

13 replies

Earth Oliver
Legend
May 2, 2022

Yes, this adjustment is easily solvable with a single Lum vs Sat curve tool, but Adobe hates curves and will never add another.

Participant
May 2, 2022

In Premiere Pro Lumetri panel you have Luma vs Sat and all of the other Hue Saturation Curves which are super useful, they should implement something like that in LR, I mean you can always use luma masks, but I think this is way much more efficient! 

Shipp
Known Participant
April 14, 2019
100% yes! True, you can work around this using a local adjustment that essentially covers the whole frame but it is inefficient. If the capability is there for the local adjustment surely it can't be such a stretch to make this a global adjustment.

Inspiring
May 21, 2018
Hello, Johan! WOuld you be so kind to elaborate a bit on this? 
aukeh26122345
Participant
May 8, 2018
Thanks Johan, that works like a charm!
For a global adjustment you can just put a very short graduated filter just outside of the picture.
JohanElzenga
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 8, 2018
You should now be able to do this with a local adjustment tool and a range mask.
-- Johan W. Elzenga
aukeh26122345
Participant
May 8, 2018
Couldn't agree more. Please give it to us Lightroomies.
The option to set the tone curve to saturation could also be a good option.
scottyk62695487
Participating Frequently
April 23, 2018
I’m a colorist use this feature all the time in Davinci Resolve. My wife is a wedding photographer and when I mentioned that she should mess with her saturation based of luminance and desaturate the shadows she told me Lightroom didn’t have that capibility and sure enough it doesn’t! I was trying to find a feature request form and I was just directed to the forum. It blows my mind this is not a feature. Come on adobe let’s add this ASAP.
JohnnyFactor
Participant
May 27, 2017
Check out some some youtube videos on the color editor in Capture One Pro 10. Simple, intuitive and elegant. It's the killer feature that could get me to cancel my CC membership.
JohnnyFactor
Participant
May 27, 2017


This requires stepping out of the raw workflow and into Photoshop to create a luminance mask and adjusting from there. This very common process should be integrated into Lightroom.