About Saturation
Image Saturation adjusts how intense the colours in a picture are, using one percentage: below one hundred drains colour towards greyscale, one hundred leaves the picture exactly as it was, and above one hundred pushes the colours further apart until they glow. The default of two hundred is a strong but usable lift, which is what most people want when a photograph has come out flat.
The number is turned into a CSS saturate filter and applied to the whole frame at once. Because the picture is drawn through a canvas at its original pixel dimensions, the width and height you upload are the width and height you get back - nothing is resampled, cropped or rotated, and the only thing that changes is how vivid each pixel looks. Zero is not a no-op: it removes all colour and leaves a true greyscale image rather than an untouched one.
Two things are worth knowing before you download. The result is always re-encoded as a PNG, so a JPEG photograph frequently comes back as a larger file than the one you fed in, and there is no quality slider or output format to choose. And the picture is redrawn rather than re-tagged, so every embedded EXIF field - orientation, camera settings, GPS coordinates - is dropped along the way. The adjustment itself is uniform across the frame, with no brush and no per-channel control, though the original and the result are shown side by side so the two can be compared on screen.
How to use Saturation
- 1 Choose the image file you want to adjust.
- 2 Set the Saturation percentage - one hundred leaves the picture unchanged, below one hundred drains colour, above one hundred boosts it.
- 3 Run the tool and download the result, which is a PNG at the original pixel dimensions.
Frequently asked questions
What number leaves the image unchanged?
One hundred. The value is divided by one hundred before it reaches the filter, so one hundred becomes a neutral filter and the output looks the same as the input. Two hundred, the default, doubles the intensity, and zero drains every colour to greyscale.
Why is my JPEG file larger after saturating it?
Every result is re-encoded as a PNG, which is lossless, so a compressed photograph often grows. There is no JPEG or WebP output and no quality setting to trade against - if the file size matters, resize or compress the picture afterwards.
Does it change the image size or keep the photo metadata?
The pixel dimensions are kept exactly, since the canvas is built at the source size. Metadata is not kept: drawing through a canvas drops the EXIF block, including orientation, camera settings and GPS coordinates.
Can I saturate only part of the picture?
No. One multiplier is applied to the entire frame, with no brush, no selection and no per-channel control. The original and the result are shown side by side, so the overall change can be seen at a glance, but there is no way to vary the strength across different parts of the picture.
Free, online, and private
Free to use
Saturation is completely free. There is no account to create, no login, and no hidden charge or usage limit.
Runs online in your browser
It is a free online tool that runs entirely in your browser. Nothing to download or install — open the page and start using it right away.
Your data stays private
All processing happens locally on your device. Your input is never uploaded, stored, or tracked, so it never leaves your browser.
How Saturation behaves in detail
These are the specifics of this implementation — the exact ranges, defaults and fixed settings you are working with.
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Input | an image file plus one number field labelled Saturation (%), starting at 200 and limited by the form to the window from zero to four hundred |
| Filter | the value is divided by one hundred and handed to the canvas as a CSS saturate filter, so the default 200 becomes saturate(2) |
| Effective range | the clamp is applied to the divided ratio rather than to the typed number, so the real ceiling is forty thousand percent and a value pasted in goes straight through |
| Output | always a PNG whatever the input format - a jpg upload comes back with the same base name and a .png extension |
| Size | the canvas is created at the source pixel dimensions, so the result keeps the exact width and height of the original |
| Floor | any negative percentage is clamped to zero, which is the fully desaturated greyscale end of the scale |
Compiled from the implementation of this tool and checked against it by itoolnet.
What Saturation does not do
Knowing the edges of a tool saves more time than another list of its features. These are the cases where it will not do what you might expect.
- The zero-to-four-hundred limit on the field is not the limit on the effect. Because the clamp runs after the division by one hundred, typing nine hundred produces a saturate(9) filter rather than being capped at four - the attribute only guides the stepper arrows, and a pasted or keyboard-entered number reaches the canvas untouched.
- Every result is re-encoded as a PNG. For a photograph that usually means a larger file than the JPEG that went in, since PNG is lossless and there is no quality slider and no choice of output format anywhere on the form.
- The adjustment is uniform and blind. One multiplier covers the whole frame, so there is no per-channel control, no way to protect skin tones, and no histogram to read the effect off. The page does show the original beside the result so the two can be compared on screen, but the strength is a single number with no per-region tuning. Drawing the picture through a canvas also drops all embedded metadata, including EXIF orientation, camera settings and GPS coordinates.
Tested and documented by itoolnet, the team that builds and maintains this site.