How to How Adjust Hue and Saturation with GIMP Freeware

Adobe Photoshop is one of the world’s most popular software programs but it is expensive and not affordable for the casual digital photographer. GIMP is a powerful image editing program available for free at http://www.gimp.org/. It has many of the same features of Photoshop and is easy to use. In this article we will discuss how to the hue and saturation of an image.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• GIMP 2.0 or Later running on a PC Computer
• A copy of an image for experimentation

1. The Hue/Saturation palette Open your saved file in GIMP. The problem with this image is that the “reds” are too saturated and the green is a little too yellow. To solve this problem we will use the hue and saturation tool. From the COLORS tab select HUE/SATURATION to open the palette. The MASTER Button allows you to make changes to all colors or you can make changes selectively by choosing individual colors.
2. Changing the saturation of the reds Click on the RED box and adjust the SATURATION slider. Notice the changes in the image and the RED color box as you move the sliders. Small adjustments are enough for most images. You can either type in a number or use the slider. Each channel has a separate memory, if you hit RESET it will zero out changes for that channel only. Once you have made your adjustment click OK.
3. Changing the green hue Now, let’s adjust the HUE of the green channel. In this case, the grass looks a little too yellow. We can’t reduce the yellow, because it will dramatically impact the yellow flowers. Select the GREEN channel. Slightly increase the amount of green. Too much will impact the other colors, so only a small adjust can be made. To make a larger adjustment you would need to mask the other colors.
4. Changing the Lightness Finally, the image is a little too dark since it was a cloudy day. Select the MASTER Button to adjust the LIGHTNESS. Only a small adjustment is necessary. This will adjust the lightness of the whole image.
5. Final Image Here is the final image. The changes are small as they should be. Large dramatic changes will impact the whole image negatively. The colors still appear slightly saturated but they should since it was a cloudy and raining day. The most obvious change is the impact on the red saturation which makes details clearer.

Tips & Warnings

• When downloading GIMP, make sure you download the help system. It is a separate download and also free. To make larger changes to the hues, use the quick mask feature to mask out all areas except the part of the image you want to change.
• Always work with copies of your images to preserve you image archive.