Vibrance is the slider you wanted
Saturation treats every colour in the picture identically. Whatever you ask for, the dull grey sky and the bright red jacket both get it.
The jacket was already near the top of what the file can hold, so it hits the ceiling almost immediately and becomes a flat red shape with no detail in it. The sky, which is what you were trying to fix, has barely moved. So you push further, and the jacket gets worse.
Vibrance weights the boost by how saturated each pixel already is. Dull colours get the full amount, colours that are already vivid get almost nothing. The sky comes up, the jacket stays a jacket, and you can push it about twice as far before anything looks processed.
Both are here because saturation is still the right tool sometimes, particularly for taking colour away rather than adding it. But if you are reaching for "make the colours better", start with vibrance.
Why faces go orange
Skin is not a neutral colour. It sits reasonably high in saturation already, dominated by red with some green and little blue.
Push saturation and the red channel in skin runs out of room first. It stops at 255 while green and blue keep climbing, and the hue drifts. That is the orange plastic look, and it is not a stylistic failure, it is a channel hitting a wall.
It is also why oversaturation looks worst on the parts of a picture you most care about. Faces and skin are exactly where the eye is least forgiving and exactly where the clipping starts.
Colour clipping shifts the hue, which is the real damage
With brightness, clipping flattens detail. With colour, it does that and changes the colour while it is at it.
A deep red pushed hard goes to 255 in red and then keeps rising in green and blue, which moves it towards orange and eventually towards white. You believe you are making it redder. You are making it paler and warmer.
This is why the clipping readout matters as much on this page as on the brightness one. A picture that reports several percent blown after a saturation push has not just lost detail, it has changed colour in the places it lost it.
Warmth is a two-channel move
White balance runs along an amber to blue axis, which is why the warmth control raises red and lowers blue and leaves green where it was.
It multiplies rather than adds, so a warm photo warms most where there is most light. That matters: an additive warm shift puts an even orange fog across the shadows, which reads as a filter, while a multiplicative one reads as light.
A little warmth flatters skin and suits evening. A little cool suits snow, overcast and anything that should feel clean and clinical. Large amounts of either look like a decision, and sometimes that is what you want.
Your screen is lying to at least one of you
Phone screens boost saturation heavily out of the box. It makes photographs look better on the phone, which sells phones.
Edit on one, and you compensate for a display that is already exaggerating. The photo then goes out to a laptop, a television or a print shop where colours are shown more honestly, and it arrives oversaturated.
There is no fix for this beyond knowing it. If a photo is going somewhere that matters, be more conservative than looks right, and check it on a second screen before you commit.
Nothing leaves the tab
The photo is decoded, adjusted and saved on your own device. No upload, no account, no queue and no cap on file size beyond what the machine in front of you can hold.
Common questions
What is the difference between vibrance and saturation?
Saturation boosts every colour by the same amount, so the ones that were already strong hit the ceiling first and turn into flat blocks. Vibrance weights the boost by how dull a colour already is: a washed-out sky gets the full effect, a bright red coat gets almost none. On most photographs vibrance is the one you want, and you can push it roughly twice as far before it looks done.
Why do faces go orange when I turn saturation up?
Skin already sits fairly high in saturation, so it is one of the first things to clip. Push saturation and skin tones run out of headroom in the red channel, the hue shifts as the other channels keep climbing, and you get the orange plastic look. Vibrance largely avoids it because it does very little to colours that are already saturated.
What does clipping do to colour?
It changes the hue, which is worse than it sounds. Boost a deep red until the red channel hits 255 and it stops, but green and blue carry on rising, so the colour drifts towards orange and then towards white while you think you are making it redder. That is why oversaturated photos develop odd colour casts in the brightest areas.
Why does my photo look different on someone else's screen?
Because screens differ enormously, and phone screens in particular boost saturation heavily by default. A photo edited to look right on a vivid phone display is usually oversaturated everywhere else. Editing on a phone and being surprised by the print is one of the most common versions of this.
Can I take all the colour out?
Yes, saturation at minus one hundred gives you grey. It is not a good black and white conversion though, because it discards the colour rather than using it to decide the tones. There is a proper converter with the darkroom filters on this site if that is what you are after.
What does warmth actually change?
It shifts the white balance along the amber to blue axis, raising red and lowering blue, or the reverse. It leaves green alone, because that is the axis white balance runs on. A little warmth suits skin and evening light; a little cool suits overcast, snow and anything that should feel clean.