Selective color effects

How to adjust the hue, saturation and brightness of specific colors

- GEORGE CAIRNS

BY AND LARGE, the camera on your iPhone does a fine job of capturing a subject's true colors. If there are problems with color in a shot (such as green and magenta tints, or blue and orange color casts), then these are easily fixed using the sliders in Photos' Color and White Balance panels. However, Photos also enables you to perform more creative color adjustments to catch the eye on social media feeds. Thanks to macOS Photos' Selective Color panel, you can target specific colors in a shot and change their hue, saturation, and luminance (brightness) values. This extra level of control enables you to alter the color of a subject's clothes, darken the sky to make clouds pop out more, and even create a “spot color” effect, where a color draws the eye to a particular subject in a black and white conversion. We'll also demonstrate how Photoshop's powerful masking tools can give you even more control over your selective color adjustments.

HOW TO Make selective color adjustments

Choose start image

Here's our original unedited shot in Photos. The sky has a true blue hue. The girl's coat is a mixture of pinks and reds. Click Edit, and toggle open the Selective Color panel to adjust a host of individual color properties.

Stylize the sky