Color
The seventeen colour effects — curves, levels, gamma, saturation, duotone mapping, and the rest of the Color submenu.
Reference
- Panel
- Effect Controls
- Section
- Add effect ▸ Color
The Color family holds 17 effects that remap a layer's colour without touching its shape. Every Color effect preserves alpha: a transparent pixel stays transparent, and the layer's silhouette is unchanged.
The sections below follow the order of the Color submenu.
Curves (RGB)
Curves (RGB)
A four-channel curves adjustment. Each channel carries a piecewise-linear curve through draggable control points in the unit square, mapping input on the horizontal axis to output on the vertical. The Master curve is composed after each colour channel's own curve: red is evaluated through the Red curve, then through Master, and likewise for green and blue.
Curves has no sliders. It is edited entirely in its graph.
Selects the curve being edited: Master, Red, Green, or Blue. Each channel's curve is drawn in its own colour. The selection is shared across every Curves effect rather than stored per effect.
Restores the selected channel to a straight identity line through (0,0) and (1,1).
The graph shows gridlines at one third and two thirds and a dashed diagonal marking the identity curve. To edit:
- Drag within a short distance of a handle to move it.
- Tap empty graph space to add a control point there.
- Drag a middle handle off the top or bottom of the graph and release to remove it.
The two endpoints are locked to input 0 and input 1 and cannot be removed; their output values remain draggable. Middle points cannot be dragged past their neighbours.
Fully transparent pixels pass through untouched. When all four channels are at identity the effect skips its render pass entirely.
Tonal adjustments
Brightness / Contrast
Adds an offset to every channel, then scales the result around mid-grey. Brightness moves the whole range; Contrast expands or compresses it about 0.5.
Added to every channel before the contrast stage.
Scales each channel about mid-grey. At -1 the image collapses to flat grey; at +1 contrast is doubled.
Hue / Saturation
Converts to HSL, rotates hue, scales saturation, offsets lightness, and converts back.
Rotates every hue around the wheel. The rotation wraps, so -180 and +180 give the same result.
Scales saturation. At -1 the image is fully desaturated; at +1 saturation is doubled and clamped.
Offsets HSL lightness at half the slider's value — at +1 it adds 0.5 to lightness, not 1.0. The control therefore never drives the image to pure white or pure black on its own.
Exposure
Multiplies every channel by a power of two, then clamps. A photographic stops control.
Multiplies by 2 raised to the value: -3 divides by 8, +3 multiplies by 8.
Levels
Remaps the input range and then applies gamma. In Black and In White set the input values that map to output 0 and output 1 — everything between them is stretched across the full range, and everything outside is clamped. Gamma then bends the midtones of that remapped range. There are no output-level controls, and the remap is applied identically to all three channels.
The input value that maps to output 0. Raising it crushes shadows to black.
The input value that maps to output 1. Lowering it blows highlights to white.
Applies the reciprocal exponent to the remapped value. Above 1 brightens midtones; below 1 darkens them. The black and white points are unmoved.
In White is held at least a hair above In Black internally, so the two controls cannot be crossed into a divide-by-zero.
Gamma
Applies the reciprocal-exponent midtone bend on its own, with no black or white point remap. Identical to the Gamma stage of Levels.
Above 1 brightens midtones; below 1 darkens them. Black and white are unmoved.
Vibrance
Saturation weighted by how saturated a pixel already is. The spread between a pixel's brightest and darkest channel stands in for its existing saturation, and the boost is scaled down in proportion — muted colours move a long way, already-vivid colours barely move at all.
Positive values saturate muted colours; negative values desaturate them.
Vibrance starts at 0.5
Vibrance is the one Color effect whose default is not neutral. Adding it changes the image immediately. Set Amount to 0 for a no-op starting point.
Temperature
A warm/cool tilt. The value is added to the red channel and subtracted from blue by the same amount. Green is untouched, and the swing is at most 0.12 per channel at either extreme.
Positive values warm the image by adding red and removing blue; negative values cool it.
Monochrome and duotone
Black & White
Blends each pixel toward its luminance, computed with Rec. 601 weights. There are no per-channel mix controls.
The blend toward greyscale. At 1 the layer is fully monochrome; at 0 it is unchanged.
Sepia
Computes luminance, tints it toward a warm brown, and blends the result over the original.
The blend toward the sepia tone. At 1 the layer is fully toned.
Tint
A duotone luminance map. Each pixel's luminance selects a colour on the line between the two colour wells — dark pixels take Map Black to, bright pixels take Map White to — and the result is blended over the original.
The blend toward the duotone. At 1 the original colour is fully replaced.
The colour taken by luminance 0.
The colour taken by luminance 1.
Tint is the only effect with two colour wells. Alpha in either well is ignored.
Gradient Map
Computes each pixel's luminance and looks up a colour from a gradient, black end to white end. Alpha is preserved. Gradient Map has no sliders — the gradient bar is its only control.
The default gradient carries three stops: deep indigo at 0, crimson at 0.5, and pale yellow at 1.
Appends a stop at position 0.5, taking the colour the gradient currently shows there.
Below the preview bar sits the stop track. Each stop is a circle at its position; the selected stop is outlined. To edit:
- Drag a stop to move it. Positions are clamped to the ends of the bar.
- Tap a stop to select it, then use the colour well to recolour it.
- Use the delete button to remove the selected stop. It is disabled at two stops — a gradient can never have fewer.
Colour is interpolated linearly between stops; below the first stop the first colour is held, and above the last stop the last colour is held. Stop alpha is forced to opaque, so a gradient stop cannot be transparent.
Neither the curve data of Curves nor the stops of Gradient Map can be keyframed.
Stylised colour
Invert
Blends each channel toward its complement. Alpha is not inverted — transparent areas stay transparent.
The blend toward the negative. At 1 the layer is a full negative; at 0.5 every pixel lands on flat mid-grey.
Posterize
Quantises each channel independently into a fixed number of steps, flattening gradients into bands. The three channels are quantised separately, so banding boundaries need not coincide.
The number of quantisation steps per channel. Fractional slider positions are truncated to a whole number when the effect renders.
Pure white is preserved at every setting.
Threshold
Reduces the layer to pure black and pure white by luminance. Alpha is preserved, so the silhouette survives.
Pixels whose luminance reaches this value become white; the rest become black.
Solarize
Inverts only the channel values above a threshold, and does so per channel independently. The switch is hard rather than smooth, which is what produces the characteristic banded edges.
Channel values above this are inverted; values at or below it pass through.
Fill
Replaces the layer's colour while keeping its alpha shape — the result is a flat silhouette of the artwork. Transparent pixels stay transparent.
The blend toward the fill colour. At 1 the layer's own colour is entirely replaced.
The colour that replaces the layer's own.