Blend Modes - Hue, Saturation and Luminosity

Hue, Saturation and Luminosity

Photoshop’s hue, saturation, color, and luminosity blend modes are based on a color space with dimensions that the article HSL and HSV calls hue, chroma, and luma. Note that this space is different from both HSL and HSV, and only the hue dimension is shared between the three; see that article for details.

Unlike all of the previous blend modes described, which operate on each image channel independently, in each of these modes, some dimensions are taken from the bottom layer, while the remainder are taken from the top layer. Colors which end up out of gamut are brought inside by mapping along lines of constant hue and luma. This makes the operations uninvertible – after a top layer has been applied in one of these blend modes, it is in some cases impossible to restore the appearance of the original (bottom) layer, even by applying a copy of the bottom layer in the same blend mode above both.

  • The Hue blend mode preserves the luma and chroma of the bottom layer, while adopting the hue of the top layer.
  • The Saturation blend mode preserves the luma and hue of the bottom layer, while adopting the chroma of the top layer.
  • The Color blend mode preserves the luma of the bottom layer, while adopting the hue and chroma of the top layer.
  • The Luminosity blend mode preserves the hue and chroma of the bottom layer, while adopting the luma of the top layer.

Because these blend modes are based on a color space which is much closer than RGB to perceptually relevant dimensions, it can be used to correct the color of an image without altering perceived lightness, and to manipulate lightness contrast without changing the hue or chroma. The Luminosity mode is commonly used for image sharpening, because human vision is much more sensitive to fine-scale lightness contrast than color contrast. See Contrast (vision).

Few editors other than Photoshop implement this same color space for their analogs of these blend modes. Instead, they typically base their blend modes on HSV (aka HSB) or HSL. Blend modes based on HSV are typically labeled hue, saturation, and brightness. Using HSL or HSV has the advantage that most operations become invertible (at least in theory), but the disadvantage that the dimensions of HSL and HSV are not as perceptually relevant as the dimensions of the space Photoshop uses.

Read more about this topic:  Blend Modes

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