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Saturate or desaturate areas of your image with the Sponge tool

Use the Sponge tool to saturate or desaturate your images with Photoshop on the iPad

The Sponge tool, a cool saturation tool, is now available in Photoshop on the iPad.

With brush settings like Flow, Hardness, Angle, and Roundness, you can saturate or desaturate any area of your image and create interesting effects. 

Pro tip: This tool is best used to achieve subtle saturation effects in your image or creative design. 

Use the Sponge tool to saturate or desaturate colors in image areas while working with Photoshop on your iPad

Vibrance setting

Of note is the Vibrance setting, where you can toggle between the Vibrance and Saturation dialers which accomplish different things.

With Saturation, you can take all the colors on a layer of an image and make them more saturated overall.

But with Vibrance, you can take specific areas of an image not overly saturated and turn up the saturation, without making the colors appear ‘excessive’. 

Put simply, you can dial down (or up!) the richness and intensity of colors in your image using these settings. 

Note:

Edits made using the Dodge, Burn, Smudge, and Sponge tools are destructive in nature. 

To work with the Sponge tool, do the following: 

  1. Tap the Adjustment tools icon from the toolbar to reveal the tool options and select the Sponge tool. 

  2. Now choose your sponge settings - SizeFlow, and Hardness

  3. Next, tap on the three-dot icon to go to Sponge settings and make selections for Mode (Saturate/Desaturate), Angle, and Roundness.

    • Saturate - intensifies the color saturation.
    • Desaturate - unsaturates the color.
  4. Toggle between the Saturation and Vibrance settings to achieve the optimum color balance. 

  5. Brush over the image area you want to turn up, or down, the intensity and vibrancy of colors.

  6. We recommend you keep Sample All Layers selected (which is selected by default) before you sponge on smart objects. 

To learn more about the other tool options, go to Dodge and Burn tool options

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