LAB Fundamentals Part 5: Dealing with Saturation

Day 12: 25 Insights in 25 Days Holiday Marathon

Dealing with Saturation in LAB Colorspace

There have been quite a few comments in my previous Insights on LAB Fundamentals. And mostly, the question revolves around dealing with saturation in LAB colorspace.

The questions make a ton of sense. The advantage of LAB is the color separation it gives you, which you can’t precisely replicate in RGB. The disadvantage is how easy it is for those colors to over saturate. Given that problem, here are the questions we’re going to answer in this Insight:

• Can I just start with an over-saturated LAB correction and then just de-saturate in RGB (as a quick starting point)?
• Rather than just working in LAB, can we replicate those results by adding saturation in DaVinci Resolve’s RGB mixer?
• Since LAB does such an interesting job saturating an image, can we use it to desaturate an image?