How to Adjust Color and Tone in PhotoDirector

PhotoDirector's Adjust panel brings White Balance, Tone, and HSL / Color controls together. Use it when a photo looks too cool, too dark, or flat, or when you want to change one color without changing the others. You can fine-tune or reset each section separately.

Click Library & Adjust at the top left of the window and select your photo. If the photo is open in a Guided & GenAI tool and isn't in your library yet, PhotoDirector asks whether to add it. Click Yes.

To bring in a new photo, click Import Photo in the middle of the window, then select it.

The Adjust panel runs down the right side of the window and stays grayed out until you select a photo. Below the histogram come Auto Color Enhancement, Filter (Color LUT), White Balance, Tone, and more sections further down. The Auto Color Enhancement tutorial covers the automatic color fix at the top, and the Color LUT tutorial covers Filter (Color LUT).

The panel is longer than the window, so drag the scrollbar on its right edge to move down. The scrollbar works even when the mouse wheel doesn't scroll the panel.

To keep only one section open, right-click a section's title, such as Tone, and choose Enable Solo Mode. Then the section you open stays expanded, and the others fold up, so there's less to scroll.

You can also adjust a photo without adding it to your library. In Guided & GenAI, click Enhance in the rail on the left, open Color Adjustments, and click Adjustments. Its panel has White Balance, Tone, HDR Effect, Level, Curve, HSL / Color, Split Toning, and Detail. The rest of these steps use Library & Adjust.

In White Balance, open the menu beside the eyedropper. As Shot keeps the photo's original colors, and Auto lets PhotoDirector correct the color for you. A JPEG like this one has those two choices, while RAW photos list more presets.

Or click the eyedropper, then click a spot in the photo that should be gray, and PhotoDirector corrects the color from it.

Drag Temperature right to warm the photo toward yellow and red, or left to cool it toward blue. Tint, below it, moves the color between green and purple. As soon as you move a slider, the preset menu changes to Custom.

This example set Temperature to 21 to bring back the warm dusk light. At 44, the whole frame turned orange, so start with small moves.

Scroll down to Tone. Drag Exposure right to lighten the whole photo or left to darken it. Then use Contrast to widen or narrow the gap between light and dark areas. This example used Exposure 0.45 and Contrast 18.

Or click the wand at the right, just above Exposure, to let PhotoDirector set the tone sliders for you. The Auto-Tone Refinement tutorial covers it.

Below Exposure and Contrast, each Brightness slider works on one part of the range from white to black. The Tinge sliders below them work on clarity and color:

In this example, Brightest at -16 held back the sky and Dark at 24 opened up the forest and its reflection. Clarity 19 and Vibrance 24 then gave the autumn trees more color and definition.

Below Tinge, drag Amount under Dehaze to the right to make a hazy photo clearer and more colorful, or to the left to add haze.

To see where detail is lost, click the clipping icon at the top right of the histogram. It turns yellow, and the photo shows overexposed areas in red and underexposed areas in blue. Click it again to hide them.

These steps use a different photo, a couple on a picnic blanket in a meadow. In the Adjust panel, drag the scrollbar down past Tone to the HSL / Color section.

The section has two views. HSL gives each color its own slider on three sub-tabs: Hue, Saturation, and Lightness. Color shows all three sliders for one color at a time.

Keep Color selected at the top right of the histogram for these steps. Clicking B&W beside it turns the whole photo black and white, and Color switches it back.

On the Saturation sub-tab, drag a color's slider right to make it more vivid or left to tone it down. Dragging it all the way left turns that color gray. The list covers eight colors from Red to Magenta, so scroll for the rest.

This example raised Green to 34, Aqua to 30, and Blue to 54 for a bluer sky.

Or click the targeted adjustment tool, the icon to the right of Reset. It turns orange. Then drag up or down on a color in the photo, such as the sky, to raise or lower that color on the open sub-tab.

Click Hue to change the shade of each color. In this example, Yellow at -22 and Green at -76 turned the meadow golden for a late-summer look. Your changes on each sub-tab add up, so the stronger sky from Saturation stays.

Click the Lightness sub-tab to make a color lighter or darker. Aqua at -25 and Blue at -45 deepened the sky, so the white clouds stand out more.

To work color by color instead, click Color at the top of the section and pick a color chip. Then set Hue, Saturation, and Lightness for that color. These controls work the same way as in HSL view, but are grouped by color instead of adjustment type.

When the colors look right, click Export at the top of the window. PhotoDirector saves your adjustments in a new photo file, so the original file stays as it was.

The example photo now has a deeper blue sky with clouds that stand out, and the meadow has turned from green to gold.

We tested these steps in PhotoDirector 365 version 18.0.10 on Windows.