Saturation
Make colours richer or more muted.
Runs in your browser, nothing is uploadedFree, no signupNo watermark
Drop an image here
or click to choose one. It never leaves your device.
Before and after
See what changes
OriginalSaturatedDrag the handle across the image. The right-hand side is this tool's output, not a mock-up of it.
- Before
- Original
- After
- Saturated
Three steps
How to use the saturation
- 01
Drop in an image
Add the photo whose colour you want to adjust.
- 02
Push colour up or down
Raise it for richer colour, lower it for a muted look, or take it to zero for black and white.
- 03
Download
The colour change is written into the pixels.
Why this one
What makes it different
The full range in one control
From vivid through natural to fully monochrome, so you can find the point that suits the image rather than choosing between presets.
A muted look is one slider away
Pulling saturation down is how most editorial and brand photography gets its restrained feel, and it is a single adjustment.
Live preview on skin tones
Skin is where oversaturation shows first and worst, and it is the reason to judge this by eye at full size.
How this tool handles your files
- Where it runs
- Your browser, not a server
- Uploads
- None, ever
- Account
- Not required
- Watermark
- Never added
The short version
About saturation
Saturation is the adjustment most likely to be pushed too far, because more colour looks better in isolation and wrong in context. The reliable test is skin: faces saturate faster than landscapes, so the moment anyone looks sunburnt, the image has gone past the point where the extra colour was helping.
Questions
Saturation FAQ
What is the difference between saturation and vibrance?
Saturation raises all colours equally. Vibrance protects already-saturated colours and skin tones while lifting the rest. This tool adjusts saturation, so watch faces as you push it.
Why do people look sunburnt when I increase saturation?
Skin tones sit in the orange-red range and saturate faster than anything else in a typical photo. If faces are going red, you have gone too far for the rest of the image.
How do I make an image black and white?
Take saturation to zero, or use the grayscale tool, which does the same thing in one click with a proper luminance weighting.
Can I recover colour from a desaturated image?
No. Once saturation is removed and the file is saved, the colour information is gone. Keep the original if you might want it back.
Free, and staying free
The tools are free because the icons are the business.
Thridy is a library of thousands of 3D icons in one consistent style, free for commercial use with no attribution and no account. The tools exist so you never have to upload an image to somebody else's server to resize it.
Keep going
More image tools
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Pixelate Image
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Sharpen Image
Bring out edges and detail with a sharpen pass.
Brightness
Brighten or darken an image.
Contrast
Increase or soften the contrast of an image.
Grayscale
Convert an image to black and white.