Photoshop: How do I create a saturation mask?

Basically curves to change saturation in the Hue Saturation adjustment?

Do you need to control it per hue, per saturation, or both?
(both are used in some video editors)

There are various places where you could implement this, and various extents to which you could choose a more or less robust implementation.

The feature that compelled me to ask for this feature would simply be a "saturation" option for the Curves adjustment.

Having additional options to effect hue and brightness in the same way would be nice too, but not as important as saturation for me.



Adjustments for HSB would also be perfectly well suited to being added to the "levels" adjustment, and one could envision a version of this idea where "curves" manipulators could optionally replace the sliders in the Hue Saturation adjustment.

My preference would be to have HSB options for the Curves adjustment, but any of the above solutions would be great.

Actually, my ideal solution, but which I didn't mention because I figured it would be more difficult to implement would be to be able to get the saturation as a mask.



That way, I could do whatever I wanted with it.

Well, if I took that saturation channel, and used it as a mask for a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer, then I'd be able to get a pretty similar effect to what the Saturation Curves would grant me. i.e. the ability to increase saturation on the most saturate parts of an image while simultaneously decreasing saturation on the less saturation parts of the image (via inverting the mask with a separate hue_saturation adjustment).

The inspiration for this feature was in comparing an image viewed on my Cintiq .vs an image displayed on an iPhone.

I tinkered with monitor calibration and color settings for a while, but the problem was more complex than any of the settings available could help me solve. The problem was not a simple as one being brighter or an overall difference in saturation or contrast... The hue was not skewed. The problem was more complex.

It seems that the display of the iPhone tends to exaggerate the saturation of the most saturated parts of an image and understate the saturation of the less saturated parts of an image. In understand that this may just be an effect of the screen, but visual result was something like this:

BRIGHTNESS= MAX(red,MAX(green,blue);
MIN = MIN(red,MIN(green,blue);
SATURATION= (MAX-MIN)/BRIGHTNESS;
COLOR_AVERAGE = (red+green+blue)/3
SATURATION_EFFECT = (SATURATION-.5)*2 //creates scale of -1 to 1

red += (red-COLOR_AVERAGE) * SATURATION_EFFECT
green += (green-COLOR_AVERAGE) *SATURATION_EFFECT
blue += (blue-COLOR_AVERAGE) *SATURATION_EFFECT

--------SAMPLE DATA-------------
192 128 64 =213 128 43
160 128 96 =154 128 102
128 128 128 =128 128 128
96 128 160 =102 128 154
64 128 192 =43 128 213

Obviously, this code would need to be improved, but it illustrates the effect:
colors that are close together get closer together. Numbers that are far apart get further apart.

Not only was this effect very difficult to reproduce in Photoshop, but it was very cool looking. I figured, it might be handy tool to have around all of the time. After all, I can get the image brightness independent of the hue and saturation... I can get the hue independent of the saturation and brightness. Why can't I get the saturation independent of the brightness and hue?



The closest I could get was a system similar to this:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tut...
But the above system is flawed since hue affects brightness, and different colors of the same saturation can have different brightness depending on the hue.

So, as far as I can tell, there is no way to accurately get the saturation levels independently of the color and brightness within Photoshop.

Thanks -Rory-

Ah Ha!

That HSBHSL plugin get's the job done just fine.

Set up a photoshop action to create a new file, make the conversion, grab the saturation, and copy it back into the original image.

I'm set. Thank you so much

-Rory-

Another way to make a Saturation mask:

Selective Color Adjustment Layer:
Absolute mode.
For each color channel drive the black slider all the way left.
For each Neutral (White, Black, Gray) drive the black slider right.

Make a mask from one of the channels, then delete the Sel Col layer.

By saving this setting it's very quick to add the adj layer, choose the preset from the pull down menu and you're there. A hot key action would be even faster.

Wondering if we should change the topic type to question: "How do I create a saturation mask?" and mark the topic as answered? (...figuring the best way to make the topic more relevant/useful to the community)

FWIW, have you tried messing with a curves adjustment layer set to saturation blend mode? Go in to the individual curves channels and play around, it's fun.

I would like to be able to select saturation only (now you can only select light/dark areas or areas belonging to a specific color). Such Photoshop feature woud enable us to make a mask according to saturation and thus apply effects gradually according to the level of saturation (like, for example, sharpening only the least saturated areas).

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Select saturation only (and not lightness/darkness or just a color).

Actually today many Luminosity Mask panels offer Saturation Mask as well.

I also encountered 2 plug in's which can do the work very nicely:

• The Saturation Mask.
• NBP Lumizone (General Luminosity / Saturation Mask Plug In).

The NBP Lumizone has a nicely done video on Saturation Mask - NBP Lumizone for Photoshop | Saturation Masking.