P: (Early Access) Color Variance (Camera Raw)

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This post applies only to Camera Raw. 

Announcing Early Access to a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (17.4) – Color Variance

There is now a Variance slider in the Point Color edit controls, in both global Point Color and masking Point Color.

Like the Point Color Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders, Variance works on the colors in the range of the current sample. Reducing Variance pulls colors in the range toward the sampled color; increasing Variance pushes colors in the range away from the sampled color. Variance pays attention to the HSL edits you've made to the sample; it's pushing away from or pulling toward the "after" color - the right side of the color bar above the sliders. You can make the slider adjustments in any order (HSL edits first or Variance edits first), and the results will be the same.

Reducing Variance is useful for evening out skin tones: sample an area of the skin that looks like you want it to, and then reduce the variance to pull the colors in the sample closer to the sample color. This will easily reduce redness in cheeks, noses, ears, etc., and help tame unwanted color casts. If there is no area of the skin that looks quite right, you can make adjustments to the sampled color using the Point Color HSL edit sliders.

Moving the Variance slider to the right increases the variance of the colors in the range of the current sample. This is useful to bring out subtle color contrasts in landscapes, cityscapes, etc.

We would love to hear your feedback on Variance! Please give it a try and let us know what you think: How is it useful? How could it be more useful? What could we do to improve your experience?

Thank you!

The Adobe Camera Raw Team

Posted by:

[John MacLean]

I was really hoping it was going to show up in the LrC v 14.5 update yesterday.  😞

[charlesm59758123]

How do I change the color of an object in ACT to a very specific RGB color value?  Thank you!!

[John MacLean]

AFAIK that would have to happen in PS, since the RGB values in ACR or LrC are only 0-100.

[Pedro Cortez Marques]

I looove this! Color Mixer > Point Color > VARIANCE with several customized sample colors.
Once, my Editorial team had a 3rd party plugin only for Variance.

Unfortunately, CameraRaw is not suitable for e-commerce color matching (95% of my team's work).
We need to have a side-by-side reference (sometimes it can be a color sample as a small RGB color square or even a color value input, often an approved sample sent by the fashion brand studio after the studio corrected its colors).
CameraRaw does not let us input a sample near any specific part of the image (the ability to drag it). CameraRaw would not affect it, leaving it untouched and only used as the visual reference.

It is not practical to match a color to a reference that is only available in a Photoshop Layer that can't be side-by-side.