Selective saturation raises issues in the Department of Photography Ethics Department. Because you can adjust a certain color's saturation globally, it can fall more easily into the category of acceptable adjustments in reporting or documentary photography. Consider this situation: you take a photo where the background has a strange color cast that you did not see when you shot it. Happens all the time since our eyes don't see color the way the camera does. If you correct the unwanted cast in the background, aren't you making the image MORE ACCURATE to the way you saw it and others would have seen it?
It is arguable that to adjust this is more accurate reporting. On the other hand, selective color saturation (or color shifting) can clearly be overused, or used in ways that are misleading. What else is new?
Bottom Line: Selective color saturation can be either a powerful tool for getting more realistic images, or for achieving entirely un-realistic creative images.
Some things can NOT be corrected this way. In this photo it is not possible to adjust the color of the wooden post without also adjusting the color of Nicole's face: they are light and dark shades of the same color. You would need to use local pixel editing to separate the post from Nicole to adjust them separately. Even if this hand-work made the photo more accurate in relation to the actual scene, would a strictly photo reportage venue, like National Geographic, use such a method? I would guess not.
5mm, f 1.2, 1/2000, ISO 100
Left
Right
This is the photo with pretty much normal adjustments: the saturation IS adjusted mildly using vibrance, but no specific color has been shifted.
Here the green has been "turned down" as if it was an incorrect color cast due to the wrong sort of lighting.
The blues and greens have both been "turned down" quite a bit, to put all the emphasis on the face.
The blues and greens are turned all the way down. It is not clear whether viewers would accept that her sweater was gray along with the background, or see this as highly processed.
The blue has been "turned up" to make it more noticeable. This makes Nicole's face look a bit pale, while the same face looks fine in panel 1.
Just the reds are "turned up", which makes her lips redder. Nothing else is red, so the rest of the image looks normal.
Would you do this to a news photo? What if the subject was a good friend, and wished she had put on more lipstick?
Just the reds are "turned down". Since only her lips are red, the photo doesn't change much otherwise, but Nicole looks ill.
All orange and red are turned down, so mostly the green background and blue sweater stand out.
This is the photo with pretty much normal adjustments: the saturation IS adjusted mildly using vibrance, but no specific color has been shifted.
Here the green has been "turned down" as if it was an incorrect color cast due to the wrong sort of lighting.
The blues and greens have both been "turned down" quite a bit, to put all the emphasis on the face.
The blues and greens are turned all the way down. It is not clear whether viewers would accept that her sweater was gray along with the background, or see this as highly processed.
The blue has been "turned up" to make it more noticeable. This makes Nicole's face look a bit pale, while the same face looks fine in panel 1.
Just the reds are "turned up", which makes her lips redder. Nothing else is red, so the rest of the image looks normal.
Would you do this to a news photo? What if the subject was a good friend, and wished she had put on more lipstick?
Just the reds are "turned down". Since only her lips are red, the photo doesn't change much otherwise, but Nicole looks ill.
All orange and red are turned down, so mostly the green background and blue sweater stand out.
