Color matching soul tool, explaining the principle+usage+application effect of HSL color in detail

HSL adjustment is an extremely important part of color matching in the later stage of photography.

Eight of the 10 color matching tutorials you read have used this function directly or indirectly. I call it the soul tool of late color matching, not exaggerating.

In the previous vsco tutorial series, many color matching cases used this tool, and some readers were still confused after reading it. What is the hsl principle? How to use it? What's the effect?

So take it out and talk about it alone today-tell the powerful charm of hsl with the simplest software and the most direct case.

First of all, let's introduce hsl:

Color has three basic attributes: hue, saturation and lightness, and its acronym is hsl function.

Hue-H: It's the appearance of color, which is what color it is in the vernacular. For example, "blue, cyan, purple" in blue, cyan, purple and other colors is hue. Tone is the primary feature to distinguish various colors.

Saturation -S: it is the purity of color. The higher the saturation, the stronger the color, the lower the saturation and the lighter the color. When you were a child, did you play with water in the old ink bottle? The more water exchanged, the lighter the color.

Brightness -L: It is the brightness of the color. The higher the brightness of a color, the brighter the color. The darker the brightness of a color, the darker the color. The same color, the color itself has not changed, but the visual effect is different between cloudy and sunny days.

Now let's combine them and put these three things in a pie chart. Looking at the picture below, we find that the color is getting lighter from outside to inside and brighter from bottom to top.

Hue is any color outside the outer ring, saturation is the degree of fading from the outer ring to the inner ring, and lightness is the degree of brightening from bottom to top.

Let's talk about the actual case first.

In order to let people see how to adjust hsl more intuitively, we use the same picture to adjust H (hue) and S (saturation) L (lightness) respectively.

Illustrations used in this section:

The software used is vsco:

Both mobile phone lr and rough retouching have hsl function, and computers ps, lr and acr all have this function. There are many tools, and the reason is the same.

Open VSCO- import pictures-click Edit-click hsl Adjustment.

When entering the hsl panel, please note that the original intention of the hsl function is to adjust a certain color in the screen separately. If there is no color in the picture, the picture will not change even if you adjust the color.

For example, there is no yellow in the picture. If you adjust the yellow function, the picture will not change.

Here, we choose the most conspicuous blue to adjust, and the demonstration is as follows:

It can be seen that the change of blue hue can only move around the color ring, for example, from blue to blue-purple, blue-green and other colors around blue on the color ring.

First enter the hsl panel:

Saturation:

Adjust the demo:

The adjectives of saturation are generally "thick, light, deep and shallow".

Open the hsl panel.

Brightness function:

Effect demonstration:

The adjective of lightness is generally "light and shade".

We know how to operate, but in practical application, the color matching of a picture is often not determined by any tool in hsl, and it needs a combination of the three. Usually, you don't just adjust one color.

Next, I will use two cases to actually feel the charm of hsl.

As usual, the first one is the easiest.

Original film:

What should I do if I just want to keep the color of yellow eggs and turn the color of green and blue eggs into black and white like the environment?

-Just reduce the saturation of green and blue in hsl.

Open VSCO- click Edit-click hsl:

After entering the hsl function, reduce the blue-green saturation. The operation demonstration is as follows:

Complete the renderings:

For example, just to show you how to operate, when you come across a picture and want to keep one or several colors, it is very convenient to use the hsl function.

Original picture: This picture has a complete composition and captures the moment when seagulls fly. Let's try to make the sky and the chair have stronger contrast and brighter colors, and see how the effect is.

Open VSCO- edit function -HSL:

Demonstration of hsl adjustment: I suggest you adjust yourself with the original film in this part. It is troublesome to just look at the parameters, and the parameter values are not unique.

In view of this picture, I adjusted the hue of the blue sky to deepen the saturation, and the green stripes of the lounge chair deepened the saturation, so the sand on the ground was not beautiful, so I reduced the saturation to make it less eye-catching.

Complete the renderings:

Summary:

Hsl can independently adjust the hue, saturation and lightness of a certain color;

Hue adjustment can only focus on color changes, such as blue to blue-purple, blue-green, not directly to red. If you forget the color ring, you can go back and have a look.

It is not only the hsl function that can change the color of a picture. For example, exposure actually controls the brightness or darkness of the picture, so it will change the brightness of the color visually, but the advantage of hsl is that it can control a certain color independently, and exposure can only control the brightness of the whole picture.

The function of hsl is very practical, and the principle is very simple. Try it quickly ~