Sponge tool?

[rarzer]

Hello there,

I'm new user with PhotoLine, actually trying the trial version. I'm just wondering if there's an equivalent of 'Sponge tool' in Photoshop, the brush that will saturate/desaturate.

Thanks!

[ellhel]

Hello and welcome,

do you mean: "Filterbrush"-"Spoonge"

Filterbrush.jpg

Regards
Helmut

[rarzer]

Hello and thanks for your reply.

That brush generate distortion. I'm looking for a brush that will increase or decrease the saturation. Thanks.

[ellhel]

OK,

the only workaround i know:
Create 2 Adjustment Layers "Hue/Saturation" (see screenshot).Invert the Layer Masks . Draw the effect with white paint back. Paint with a small brush intensity.
Sorry for my english, i translate with google.
I have created an example action.

Saturation.actions

Saturation.jpg

Saturation Layers.jpg

Of course it is not what you are looking for.
But an alternative

Regards
Helmut

[photoken]

At least for desaturation, you can use these settings for the Painting tool:

desaturate brush.png

[Gerhard Huber]

At least for desaturation, you can use these settings for the Painting tool:

you can do both this way. Select a foreground color with high saturation to increase the saturation and a foreground color with low saturation to decrease the saturation.

Gerhard

[Herbert123]

At least for desaturation, you can use these settings for the Painting tool:

you can do both this way. Select a foreground color with high saturation to increase the saturation and a foreground color with low saturation to decrease the saturation.

Gerhard

Wow, you are correct. Works like a charm!

Even better, I found a trick to make this non-destructive: limit the de-saturated colour to about 5%, and you will be able to paint the colour back into the image - it prevents fully desaturated areas.

Thanks, this is very useful indeed.

[bkh]

Even better, I found a trick to make this non-destructive: limit the de-saturated colour to about 5%, and you will be able to paint the colour back into the image - it prevents fully desaturated areas.

If you want a fully non-destructive workflow, you can use a transparent layer in mode 'Saturation" instead of using the saturation channel of the brush. In this way, you can use the eraser to go back to the original saturation.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[Hoogo]

I showed the brush settings to someone who asked the same question maybe 5 years ago. It's easy and somewhat obvious if you know about color models, but it is unexplainable if you don't.

Masking saturated and desaturated layers is surely a better workflow that a brush for this purpose, but it is also complicated an not obvious for beginners. Maybe adding a "saturate" and "desaturate"-brush to the "lighter" and "darker"-brush would be a nice idea. These 2 present brushes could also be replaced by masking curves layers, but I'm sure they would be missed a lot, so the topic is quite the same.

[photoken]

Whooooo! Thanks, Gerhard and Burkhard -- that's great stuff.

To recap for the OP, here's the drill:
1. Open your image.
2. At the bottom of the Layers palette, click on the far left icon (with the "+" symbol) to create a new transparent layer above your image layer. This new layer will automatically become the active layer and will remain the active layer for the remaining steps.
3. At the top left of the Layers palette, click on the down arrow in the box that says "Normal" and select the "Saturation" mode.
4. Double-click on the foreground colour swatch in the Toolbox to open the Color Editor.
5. At the top left of the Color Editor, click on the down arrow in the box that says "RGB" and select "HSV".
6. Then move the Saturation slider to the left until it's at 10%.
7. Click "OK" to close the Color Editor.
8. Repeat steps 4-7 for the background colour swatch, setting its Saturation to 90%. Don't worry about the colour change.

Now, you can paint on that transparent layer with the foreground colour to desaturate the underlying image, and switch the colours to paint with the former background colour to saturate the image. You can use the Eraser tool to undo each paint job. By altering the intensity of the painting tools and the eraser, the blending percentage of the transparent layer, the saturation settings of the colours, etc., you've got a whole lot of control over your saturation painting. Best of all, since all the painting is done on that transparent layer, the original image itself isn't altered and you can go back at a later time to fine-tune your work.

Here's a quick example. The original:

JF orig.jpg

The final result:

JF final.jpg

The Layers palette:

JF layers 02.png

[Herbert123]

That's cool - we now have three workflows - although I have to admit that none are nearly as obvious as a simple sponge tool like Photoshop.

[photoken]

That's cool - we now have three workflows - although I have to admit that none are nearly as obvious as a simple sponge tool like Photoshop.

Yeah. Having an additional Saturation brush tool would eliminate having to manually set the colours (steps 4-7). Not a priority for me, though.

Just to take my example to the extreme, for this image I used separate layers for the saturation and desaturation. Then I used the original image as a luminosity mask for the layers. I inverted the mask colours for the saturation layer so that the saturation would mostly affect the dark areas of her hair. The luminosity mask limited the desaturation mostly to the light areas of her face (with a little light erasing around her eyes and mouth...).

The result:

Jane Fonda final.jpg

The layers wound up looking like this:

Jane Fonda layers.png

[Herbert123]

That is a really good idea - I added a curves adjustment layer to the layer mask to be able to control the saturation for the highlights only to achieve a more vibrant highlights effect:

Untitled.jpg

Untitle2.jpg

[photoken]

That is a really good idea - I added a curves adjustment layer to the layer mask to be able to control the saturation for the highlights only to achieve a more vibrant highlights effect:

Oh yeah, luminance masks are one of my Favorite Things. They are very powerful and can't be beat for the flexibility they offer, especially with PL's ability to add adjustment layers to masks....