The “Color Variations” dialog

The upper part of the window is clear, I think: “Original” and “Current Pick”
“Original” stands for the original and “Current Pick” stands for the snapshot after all the clicks that you have already performed by that time.
If you want to go back to the original after all your clicks, then click on the Original box.
At the top right, we find four fields:
“Shadows”, “Midtones”, “Highlights” and “Saturation”.
Plus, a slider “Fine – Coarse”.
By default, the field Midtones is checked and I think it is the best choice. The Midtones represent the average color, not too dark nor too light.
Shadows are the darkest colors in our picture.
Highligts are the lightest colors in our picture.
Saturation gives your image, how shall I say, a “vivid” mode.
We apply the colors fine or drastically with the slider.
The right side of the window also seems clear, darker or lighter.

But what do all these picks in the middle mean?
They only state more green, more yellow, more this more that.
Everything is more, nothing less.

Well, nothing less is true.
If you click eg on the “More Yellow” box it means, of course, that you would like more yellow, but it also means that you want less blue.
So, if we want less green, then we click the “More Magenta” button.
But I hear you thinking that there are more colors than green, yellow, red, magenta, cyan and blue.

To explain this I have the following chart:

Check if our picture has too much of the Cobalt color in it.
So we need to add more Orange color.
How do we do it?
For this, we click twice on “More Yellow” and twice on “More Red”.
This all seems complicated, but this is not.
You simply must know the little graph from above.

For my example photo, I had a bit too much Red / Orange.
And after all operations in the Variations window, it looks a little better anyway.

I must confess that I made changes in both Midtones window as well as in the Saturation window.
Save the image when you are satisfied.
Click on “File” – “Save” from the menu bar.
Or save the file under a different name, so that you can keep the original.
Click on “File” – “Save as” … in the menu bar.

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