Edit photo colors directly

Place a pin

Click a color in the photo or on the wheel to place a pin. Click an existing pin to select it. A new pin is discarded if you click away without adjusting it.

To sample an area, hold Ctrl and drag a box over it in the photo. The pin's selection is based on the colors and brightness within that area. Matching colors elsewhere in the photo may also be affected.

For how colors are arranged on the wheel, see Reading the color wheel.

Adjust hue, chroma, and lightness

Drag the pin around the wheel to change its hue, or toward or away from the center to change its chroma.

The dashed origin marker shows the starting color. Drag this marker to change which color the pin selects. The two swatches above the wheel show the original and destination colors.

Use the Lightness strip below the wheel to lighten or darken the selected color without changing its hue. Double-click the strip to reset the lightness adjustment.

Adjust the selection range

Scroll over a pin to change the range of colors it affects:

• Scroll up to include more neighboring colors.
• Scroll down to narrow the selection.
• Hold Shift while scrolling to adjust the feathering independently of the selection range.
• Hold Alt while scrolling to change the pin's variance — how closely its hues gather around the pin's hue.

Selections always have a soft edge. Adjust the feathering to control how gradually the effect fades at the boundary.

With a pin selected, hold H to preview the areas it affects.

For sliders and a plot of the pin's colors, open the Pin panel.

Use the pin toolbar

When a pin is selected, its toolbar appears at the top right of the wheel:

• Sample this pin's range from the photo — drag over an area to set the pin's lightness range.
• Protect colors — keeps other pins from changing this pin's colors.
• Range, feather and variance — opens the Pin panel.
• Duplicate pin — adds an exact copy and selects it.
• Delete pin — or press Delete.

Separate similar colors

Colors that sit close together on the wheel can be difficult to adjust independently — for example, skin and an orange wall. Use color and brightness together to refine the selection.

• Choose a lightness range. Right-click the pin and choose Shadows, Midtones, or Highlights under Lightness range. Choose Full range to include all lightness levels. See Luminance masks.
• Sample an area. Hold Ctrl and drag over the area you want to adjust. This creates a selection based on both its color and brightness.
• Use separate pins. Click Duplicate pin in the pin toolbar, then give each copy a different lightness range and adjustment.

You can place up to 12 pins on a photo.

For adjustments across all colors, see Saturation, Chroma curve, and Color EQ.