At first glance, the vibrance and saturation sliders might seem like they do the same thing, and while they do operate in similar manners, they are fundamentally different in their functions. This excellent video tutorial will show you the difference between the two so you can take better control of the color in your images.
Coming to you from Colin Smith with photoshopCAFE, this fantastic video tutorial will show you the difference between vibrance and saturation in Photoshop and Lightroom. Both have the same fundamental purpose: to increase or decrease the intensity of colors in an image. However, on one hand, saturation works by simply increasing the intensity of every color at the same time. On the other hand, vibrance does not apply the same level of adjustment to each color, instead applying a larger change to more muted colors. It also tries to protect skin tones and stop posterization (this happens when colors are maxed out, creating areas with blockiness or bands instead of even transitions). In this sense, vibrance is like a smarter version of saturation. Nonetheless, it is still a global adjustment, so if you want to create more local changes, you will need to jump into tools like the HSL sliders or layer masks. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
