Boost colors in your macro photography with Serif Affinity Photo

Affinity
(Image credit: James Patterson / Digital Camera)

Sometimes colors need a subtle boost to make your images shine. Affinity Photo offers an array of color controls that let you achieve this with ease. We mostly use these tools to boost the existing colors in a scene so that the image ‘pops’ off the screen or out of the print. But if you like, you can also use these tools to completely change a color from one shade to another. In this tutorial we’ll focus on the excellent HSL tool. This stands for Hue, Saturation and Luminosity: three factors that control the shade, intensity and brightness of the colors in the image. Not only can you use the control to boost colors, but you can also target precise color ranges within the image, allowing you to alter one color without affecting others.

We’ll use the HSL tool here to enhance the colorful feathers in a macaw, but you’ll find these tips useful no matter what you’re editing. Whether you want to boost the blue sky in a landscape, draw attention to colorful clothes or change the color of anything you like, the HSL tool can help. We’ll go over the key features of the tool here, and you’ll find a full walkthrough of the technique in the accompanying video.

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