Today’s Question: Is there any difference in the adjustment effect when you choose between the HSL or Color option on the Adjust popup in the Color Mixer section [in Lightroom Class, Camera Raw, or Lightroom]?
Tim’s Quick Answer: No, choosing between the HSL and Color options for the Color Mixer adjustment only changes how the sliders are displayed, and does not impact the effect of your adjustments.
More Detail: There are a couple ways you can change how the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders for the various colors are displayed on the Mixer tab of the Color Mixer adjustment, which is available in Lightroom Classic, Camera Raw, and Lightroom. Changing the slider configuration based on these options, however, does not in any way affect how the adjustments change the appearance of a photo.
The first way you can change the slider display configuration, as noted in today’s question, is to choose between HSL and Color from the Adjust popup. If you choose HSL then the sliders for each color range will be grouped based on hue, saturation, and luminance. So, you’ll have Hue sliders for each of the colors grouped together, followed by the Saturation sliders, and then the Luminance sliders.
If you instead choose Color from the popup, the sliders will be grouped in sets for each color, with a Hue, Saturation, and Luminance slider for Red, then a Hue, Saturation, and Luminance slider for Orange, and so on.
The other way you can change the configuration of the sliders is to filter them by group. When you have selected the HSL option, for example, you will see links that enable you to only see the Hue sliders, only see the Saturation sliders, only see the Luminance sliders, or see all sliders. With the Color option selected the same basic concept applies, except that you’re filtering sliders based on colors. So you can choose a color by clicking the circle of the applicable color, for example, to only see the Hue, Saturation, and Luminance sliders for that color. You can also click the circle that shows a rainbow gradient to view all sliders for all colors.
The behavior of the sliders is exactly the same in all cases. For example, if you change the value for the Red slider for Hue, and then switch from HSL to Color, you’ll see that the Red value remains exactly the same, and the effect on the image does not change.
