Graphics

Super Saturation

A new and better way to add / remove color saturation

If you turn up the saturation in a graphics program to get a more vivid image, it will often look unnatural, and certain areas of the image might be over-saturated. SuperSaturation is a Photoshop filter that solves this problem.

Both when adding and removing color (de-saturating), this filter offers additional possibilities over the built-in saturation control in Photoshop, like e.g. maintaining individual color brightnesses like you see below.

Download the plug-in for free and put it in the C:/Program Files/Adobe/Photoshop/Plug-ins/filters/ directory (location may vary):

Download (Windows)

Last updated: 16-Feb-2022 13:49

Example Images

Example gallery I (gamma correction)
Example gallery II (liveliness)

More Example Images

Original	Photoshop	SuperSaturation

Super Saturation lets you increase the amount of color in desaturated (grayish) areas without blowing out the colors in areas that already have a lot of color. Weird banding effects are also avoided this way.
Original	Photoshop	SuperSaturation

When increasing the gamma to make images brighter, Photoshop's built-in algorithm and Super Saturation also behave differently. This effect is often quite visible on skin tones.
Original	Photoshop	SuperSaturation

When decreasing the gamma to make images darker, Photoshop tends to leave red and blue colors too bright. And some colors change their hue, like the yellow at the bottom becoming orange. This happens because Photoshop operates in RGB color space. Super Saturation does not.
Original	Photoshop	SuperSaturation

Shifting the colors around in the color circle, aka "hue shift" behaves differently as well. Super Saturation tries to stay closer to the brightness of the original.

Plug-in and web page written by Joachim Michaelis 16-Feb-2022.

Website by Joachim Michaelis