Select colour, then decide how to change it
Colour Range selects pixels similar to a sampled colour. It can target skin, foliage, fabric or paint, but it does not identify a person or understand skin. A wooden table or warm wall can qualify along with a face. A shape supplies the spatial limit when colour alone is not enough.
Give skin more colour without guessing
- Set the overall white balance first. Open Masks → Colour Range, then click an evenly lit cheek or drag a small area of representative skin. Avoid specular highlights, deep shadows, lips and coloured reflections for the first sample.
- Preview selection shows the coverage. Range width includes more neighbouring hues; Softness blends the boundary between selected and unselected colours. Widen gradually until the natural variation in skin is covered.
- If the background also qualifies, add a radial or pen shape in Shapes & overlay to restrict the correction to the subject. Check the shape combination and overlay rather than assuming a new shape recognised the person.
- Open Colour. To deepen the skin's existing colour, increase Saturation a little. To add warmth, push the wheel gently towards orange. A pinker push gives a rosier result; a strong push can make skin unnaturally red.
- Adjust Lightness separately if the colour is right but the skin is too dark. Use Tone → Exposure for a broader local lighting change.
- The overlay hides when a colour correction starts. Inspect the actual skin, then use Preview selection again to check cheeks, forehead, hands and transition into hair or clothing.
- Compare the local's eye off and on at Fit and 100%. Check each face separately when lighting differs.
Which colour control should I use?
| Goal | Start here | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| More of the colour already present | Saturation | Existing colours gain strength without deliberately rotating their hue |
| More colour mainly in muted areas | Vibrance under More colour controls | Muted colour gains more than already strong colour |
| Warmer, cooler, pinker or greener skin | Colour wheel | Adds a visible colour push in your chosen direction |
| Change orange skin towards a different hue | Hue shift | Rotates the selected existing hues |
| Brighter selected colour | Lightness | Changes the lightness of selected colours |
| A brighter face overall | Tone → Exposure | Changes light under the same mask, in stops |
The wheel is controlled like Primary correction: drag away from the centre for more strength, Shift for finer movement, Ctrl to lock direction, and double-click, right-click or Home to reset its colour push. Resetting the wheel keeps Saturation, Lightness and the selection. Warmth and Tint are the two axes of that same correction and stay in sync under More colour controls.
Understand width, softness and precise ranges
Range width is the main hue span in degrees. Increasing it selects more neighbouring hues. Softness is the transition beyond that span; it is measured in hue degrees, not pixels. A soft colour selection does not automatically make a shape's physical edge softer.
Sample colour… replaces the active local's colour selection while retaining its shapes and luminance limits. If you cannot get enough coverage, check those existing restrictions too. Escape cancels the picker.
Under Refine individual ranges, Luminance, Hue and Colour each have a switch, pipette, From, To, Falloff and inversion. Use Luminance to protect very bright or dark areas and Colour to reduce selection of near-neutral areas. See the full range reference before combining several tight limits.
Check the result rather than a target colour
Skin varies with the person, light, surroundings and artistic intent. The vectorscope's Skin line is a hue reference under neutral lighting, not a rule for every face. If only one side of the face has a cast, use a shape or an additional local instead of forcing the entire face towards one colour.
If the edit looks patchy, widen the sampled range or increase its falloff and check any luminance restriction. If a wall changes, add a spatial shape. If skin looks orange, reduce the wheel push; saturation and a colour cast are different changes. A tiny correction with clean coverage is usually easier to judge than a large correction hidden under a strong overlay.