Final answer:
Saturation affects the purity and intensity of all colors equally, potentially leading to unnatural colors when overdone, while vibrance adjusts only the muted colors, protecting skin tones and providing a more balanced result.
Step-by-step explanation:
When editing images, saturation refers to the purity and intensity of a color. Increasing saturation leads to colors becoming more vivid and intense, very much like Henri Matisse's use of very saturated colors in his paintings. However, over-saturation can result in colors that look unnatural or too strong.
Contrarily, vibrance is an editing tool that selectively increases the intensity of the more muted colors in an image, without affecting the already well-saturated colors as much. This subtlety in adjustment can prevent colors from becoming overly exaggerated, providing a more balanced and natural-looking result. Vibrance can also protect skin tones from becoming too unnaturally colored, which is particularly useful in portraits. Vibrance, on the other hand, refers to the intensity or strength of the colors without affecting the saturation levels of the already saturated colors. It enhances the less saturated colors more than the highly saturated ones, resulting in a more balanced and natural-looking image.