Colour

Colour handles white balance first, then how strongly the colours that remain are expressed.

White balance

• Presets give you a starting point for common lighting rather than making you dial it in from nothing.
• Temperature runs cool to warm, from −100 to +100. Push it warm to take the blue cast off an overcast shot, cool to correct tungsten indoor light.
• Tint runs green to magenta on the same scale, and fixes the cast temperature alone cannot — most often fluorescent lighting.

Vibrance and saturation

These both make colour stronger, but not in the same way, and the difference matters.

• Saturation raises every colour equally. Push it and the colours that were already strong go first, which is what makes over-saturated photos look artificial.
• Vibrance favours the muted colours and holds back the ones already saturated. It is the gentler of the two, and it protects skin tones, so it is usually the right one to reach for on people.

If a photo is looking garish, the fix is almost always less Saturation and a little more Vibrance, rather than pulling both down together.

For per-colour control — making just the greens deeper without touching the sky — use HSL in curves, HSL and grading. To warm only part of a frame, put the adjustment behind a mask.