You can use saturation in Krita in several ways, including adjusting overall saturation, targeting specific tones, and using lightness as a driver.
Here's a breakdown of how to use saturation effectively in Krita:
Adjusting Saturation: General Methods
Krita offers several tools to adjust saturation:
- Color Balance Filter: This allows for broad adjustments across shadows, midtones, and highlights, including saturation levels for each.
- Hue/Saturation/Lightness Filter: A common and direct way to manipulate saturation. You can find this under Filters > Adjust > Hue/Saturation/Lightness. Adjust the "Saturation" slider to increase or decrease the vibrancy of your colors.
- Levels Adjustment: While primarily for tonal range, subtle saturation adjustments can be made here, especially when working with individual color channels.
- Curves Adjustment: Similar to Levels, Curves can affect saturation, particularly when manipulating individual color channels.
Targeted Saturation Adjustment
Krita allows you to target specific hues or lightness values when adjusting saturation. This is powerful for fine-tuning your images:
Saturation Based on Lightness:
- Add a Filter Mask: Create a new filter layer (e.g., Hue/Saturation/Lightness) and add it as a mask on top of the layer you want to adjust.
- Choose the Right Settings: Within the filter, set the "Channel" to "Saturation." Then, select "Lightness" as the driver channel.
- Adjust the Curve: By pulling up the right end of the curve, you increase the saturation in the lighter parts of the image. Conversely, pulling it down desaturates the lighter areas. This allows you to make brighter areas more or less vibrant.
Saturation Based on Hue:
- Add a Filter Mask: Similar to the above, add a filter layer with a mask.
- Choose the Right Settings: Set the "Channel" to "Saturation" and the "Driver" to "Hue."
- Adjust the Curve: The horizontal axis represents the hue values. By manipulating the curve, you can desaturate or saturate specific colors. For example, to desaturate everything except teals/blues, you would lower the curve for all other colors and leave the teal/blue area unaffected or raised.
Example: Increasing Saturation in Lighter Areas
Here's a step-by-step example of how to increase saturation in the lighter parts of an image:
- Add a Hue/Saturation/Lightness Filter Layer: Right-click on the layer you want to adjust and select "Add" -> "Filter Mask" -> "Hue/Saturation/Lightness".
- Configure the Filter: In the Hue/Saturation/Lightness properties:
- Set the "Channel" to "Saturation".
- Set the "Driver" to "Lightness".
- Adjust the Curve: In the graph that appears, the horizontal axis represents lightness values (dark to light), and the vertical axis represents the saturation adjustment. Drag the right end of the curve upwards. This will increase the saturation of the lighter parts of the image. Experiment with the curve shape for different effects.
By understanding these methods, you can effectively control and manipulate saturation within Krita to achieve your desired artistic results.
