Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom



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Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

This article is a part of our series Photo Editing in Lightroom 101. Throughout the series we’ll cover the details of Lightroom’s library and develop modules and how you can use Lightroom to improve your own photos. As new articles are published they will be added to this page. If you don’t want to miss future articles in the series, please subscribe to our RSS feed or our email newsletter.

In the previous article we looked at the process of adjusting tones in Lightroom. In this article we’ll be moving on to cover clarity, vibrance, and saturation. All of these settings are also in the “basic” section of the develop module, under the title of “Presence”.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

Let’s start with clarity. The clarity slider is closely related to contrast, but it works a little bit differently. The contrast slider affects all of the tones in a photo, while the clarity slider impacts mid tones. By increasing the clarity you will be bringing out detail and texture. And by decreasing the clarity you will be softening the texture.

The image below shows a sample photo with a clarity of 0, -100, and 100. You can see the extreme softening when the clarity is at -100, and the texture when clarity is at 100.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

A boost in clarity can be used when you want to add some detail and texture, and a reduction in clarity can be useful when you want to soften the subject, often this is used for subtly softening skin. You can also use a reduction in clarity with an adjustment brush to soften skin without impacting the entire photo. We’ll cover adjustment brushes later in this series.

In the case of the sample photo, I’m setting the clarity to 20. This setting helps to bring out some texture without going too far.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

Below the clarity slider you’ll also find the vibrance and saturation sliders. These two are similar but with key differences. The saturation slider will impact all tones in a photo, either boosting the color saturation or decreasing it. Vibrance is a little bit smarter. Boosting the vibrance will increase the intensity of the colors in a photo without overdoing things like skin tones.

Below you can see how a sample photo is impacted by boosting the vibrance as compared to boosting the saturation. The vbrance boost increases the intensity of the colors, but does not has a glaring impact on the skin tone like you get with an extreme saturation boost.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

When boosting saturation it’s very easy to go overboard without even making a big adjustment. The example was extreme in order to clearly show the difference, but even much smaller boosts of saturation can often be too much.

When decreasing vibrance and saturation there are also some differences. Taking the saturation to -100 will remove all color and give you a black and white photo, while taking vibrance to -100 will still leave some color in the photo.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

In the case of the sample photo, I’m going to set the vibrance at +15 and the saturation at +5.

Working with Clarity, Vibrance, and Saturation in Lightroom

If you don’t want to miss the other articles in this Photo Editing in Lightroom 101 series, please subscribe to our RSS feed or our email newsletter. As new articles are published they will be added to the series page, which will serve as an index for the entire series.