What is saturation in video?
The intensity of colour: how far each hue is from a neutral grey of the same brightness. Zero saturation is black and white; high saturation is vivid, poster-like colour.
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Change Video Saturation
Turn colour up for clips that look lifeless, or down for a quieter, more filmic feel. Vibrance lifts dull colours first, so faces stay believable while the rest comes alive.
To change video saturation, open the clip above and move Saturation on the Basic tab: to the right every colour gets stronger, to the left they all drain towards grey. To make colours pop without orange faces or glowing reds, use Vibrance instead, which raises muted colours more than ones that are already strong.
Saturation affects every hue equally. When only one colour is the problem, such as a sky you want deeper or a neon sign you want quieter, the HSL tab changes that band alone; the change a colour page shows how. Removing colour altogether is a job for the black and white page, and if the colours look wrong rather than weak, start with color correction.
How to change the saturation of a video
Open the video
Choose Select video. Pro tools opens on Basic, where Saturation and Vibrance sit in the colour group below the tone sliders.
Start with Vibrance
Move Vibrance right for richer colour. Because it favours the duller colours, skies, foliage and clothing gain the most while already-strong colours change less.
Use Saturation for an even change
Move Saturation when everything should change by the same amount, up for punch or down for restraint. Watch the Vectorscope: the cloud grows outward as saturation rises.
Adjust single colours
On the HSL tab, pick a band such as Blue or Green and move its Saturation. Reset HSL returns every band to neutral.
Compare and export
Turn on Before and after (B) to check skin and bright colours, then choose Export video.
Saturation, vibrance and how the eye reads colour
Saturation describes how far a colour is from grey. On the Vectorscope, grey sits at the centre and every pixel is plotted at an angle for its hue and a distance for its saturation, so a muted clip makes a small, tight cloud and a vivid one spreads towards the edge.
Saturation scales every pixel’s distance from grey by the same factor. That is simple and predictable, but it treats a faded jacket and an already-intense red flower alike, and the flower can be pushed past what a screen can show. Vibrance applies a larger boost to low-saturation pixels and a smaller one to pixels that are already strong, so the overall picture feels richer while the most intense colours are held back. That is usually what people mean by “make the colours pop”.
Why skin is the first thing to go wrong
Skin is a moderately saturated orange, and viewers are extremely sensitive to it. A saturation boost that looks great on a landscape turns faces sunburnt or orange. Check the Vectorscope skin tone line after any big change; if faces have moved outward along it, lower the Orange band’s Saturation on the HSL tab rather than undoing the whole adjustment.
How far to push it
- Heavily saturated reds and magentas often lose texture first: petals, fabric and neon signs turn into flat blobs once their channels reach the limit.
- Most video stores colour at a quarter of the brightness resolution (4:2:0 sampling), and platforms compress it hard. Very saturated edges come back from upload blocky or smeared, so leave some headroom.
- Phones and laptops with wide-gamut screens show colours more intensely than a standard monitor. If you grade on a phone, ease off a little for viewers on older screens.
- Saturation amplifies colour noise in shadows along with everything else. Grainy low-light clips tolerate less.
A useful habit: raise the slider until it clearly looks too much, then come back about halfway. Your eye adapts to rising saturation within seconds, so judging by feel alone tends to overshoot.
Turning colour down instead
Lower saturation is a look in its own right. It calms busy locations, makes mixed lighting less obvious, and gives documentaries and interviews a measured tone. Gentle cuts of 10 to 30% are often enough.
- For a muted, filmic palette, try the Matte or Bleach bypass categories in All looks and set Intensity to taste.
- To quieten one distracting colour, such as a bright green sign or a red car behind your subject, lower that band’s Saturation on HSL and leave the rest alone.
- To keep one colour and lose the rest, the Keep only this colour switch on the HSL tab does it in one step; see color splash video.
- To remove colour entirely with control over how each colour turns grey, use Black and white on the Effects tab, with Red mix, Green mix and Blue mix.
Saturation questions
Saturation vs vibrance: which should I use?
Start with Vibrance for footage that looks dull, because it lifts the weakest colours most and protects strong ones. Use Saturation when you want every colour changed equally, especially when reducing colour.
How do I make a video more vibrant without orange skin?
Raise Vibrance rather than Saturation, then check faces against the skin tone line on the Vectorscope. If they still look too orange, lower Saturation in the Orange band on the HSL tab.
How do I desaturate a video?
Move Saturation on the Basic tab to the left. A small cut gives a muted look; all the way gives a plain greyscale picture, though Black and white on the Effects tab offers better control over the tones.
Why do my colours look different after uploading?
Platforms re-compress video and store colour at reduced resolution, and viewers watch on screens with different colour ranges. Very saturated colours suffer most, so keep a little in reserve.
Can I boost just one colour?
Yes. On the HSL tab, choose one of the eight bands, from Red to Magenta, and raise its Saturation. The other colours stay as they are.