Hue, saturation and colour effects

Let's play with Photoshop's hue, saturation and colour tools, says James Abbott, for four effects that work with most images

- James Abbott

Sometimes less is more in Photoshop, and although some techniques are unavoidably complicated, some are so simple they almost feel like cheating. While some may argue that using Photoshop itself is a form of cheating, let's not forget all the tricks photographers could get up to in the darkroom, as well as the ability to choose films with different colour balances and saturation levels.

With this in mind, we're going to look at techniques that are based around hue, saturation and colour to create strong effects that require little intervention to achieve them using Adjustment Layers. No Blending modes this month; we're going to focus purely on the controls available in the Adjustment Layers we'll use.

These effects can be applied to pretty much any image, so they aren't subject-specific. What's more, most can be easily made stronger or weaker than we'll cover here, so there's plenty of scope to adjust the four techniques to your liking.

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