Saturation or colour saturation is a characteristic of the colourfulness of a colour. Alongside hue and brightness, saturation is one of the basic perceived properties of a colour. It describes the quality of a colour location, whether it tends towards bright or achromatic colours. Black and white, but also all shades of grey, are described as achromatic and unsaturated colours.
The ‘Saturation’ rendering intent is a rendering intent that is used in some colour management applications. However, this rendering intent is not available and implemented in all software.
The ‘Saturation’ rendering intent is based on maintaining the saturation of the colours and can be helpful in certain situations. With this rendering intent, the colours are converted in such a way that the relative saturation is retained. This can make colours appear more vivid and saturated.
This rendering intent can be used, for example, if the saturation of the colours in the image or in the display is particularly important, for example in screenshots, pie charts, statistics bars or in graphic designs that are intended to achieve a strong visual effect but where harmonious colour reproduction, as in photographs, does not need to be taken into account.
The ‘saturation’ rendering intent leads to a shift in other colour aspects such as changes in brightness or hue. This rendering intent should therefore be used with caution. The ‘saturation’ rendering intent is much less common in use than rendering intents such as ‘perceptual’, ‘relative colourimetric’ or ‘absolute colourimetric’.
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