How to make colors pop
Upload a photo and the Adjust tab opens with saturation at 135 percent, a noticeable boost that brings life to flat colours. Drag the slider between 0 and 200 percent. At 100 the colours are unchanged, above it they get stronger and below it they fade toward grey. At 0 the image is fully desaturated, similar to grayscale.
Saturation is useful for photos taken on overcast days, under fluorescent light or with older phone cameras, where greens, blues and reds can look washed out. Food, landscapes and product shots often benefit from a small boost.
Avoiding oversaturated photos
It is easy to go too far. Skin is the first thing to suffer: past about 140 percent, faces can turn orange or red and look sunburnt. Strong reds and oranges can also lose detail and become flat patches of colour. A good habit is to push the slider until it clearly looks too much, then back off by about a third.
For portraits, a modest boost between 105 and 120 percent is usually enough. Landscapes and colourful graphics can tolerate more. If the original photo has a colour cast, for example yellow from indoor lights, saturation will make that cast stronger rather than fixing it.
Desaturating for a muted look
Lowering saturation to 60 to 85 percent gives a calm, film-like or editorial look that is popular for lifestyle and brand imagery. It also helps photos from different sources look more consistent next to each other. Pair it with a slight contrast change in the same Adjust tab for a finished style. The server applies all edits at full resolution; PNG stays PNG and other formats are saved as JPG.