Adjust saturation
Colour intensity is what makes a food photo look appetizing or a product shot look lifeless, and it rarely comes out right straight from a camera sensor in mixed lighting. This endpoint takes a saturation value and any supported image and pushes colour intensity up or down in one call, so a whole catalog can carry the same visual punch without a designer touching each file.
Run it online
Run this on our servers with your account. Free tools run in your browser; this one bills your KIT balance per the price above.
The problem with inconsistent color
Two photos of the same product shot minutes apart under slightly different light can look noticeably different in how vivid their colors read, and across a catalog of thousands that inconsistency is visible even to casual shoppers. Manually nudging saturation image by image doesn't scale, and applying one flat filter to a whole folder often oversaturates the images that were already fine.
What saturation actually changes
Saturation controls how intense or how muted a color appears without touching its brightness or its hue, so a bright red stays equally bright whether it's pushed toward vivid or pulled toward gray. That distinction matters because it means this endpoint can make colors pop or fade them toward monochrome without accidentally darkening the image or shifting its color balance, which a cruder adjustment often does as a side effect.
Making the call
Send the image and a numeric saturation value to POST /image/saturation, and you get a task_id back right away since the job processes asynchronously in the queue. The result arrives through a signed webhook, the reliable path for automated pipelines, or a signed link valid for 24 hours when someone just needs to grab the file manually.
A concept borrowed from color theory
Saturation as a formal axis of color, distinct from hue and brightness, comes from color models developed for painters and printers long before digital image processing existed, and it's the same logic that lets a designer describe 'a duller version of this exact blue' without changing what blue it is. Digital tools just made that same adjustment instant and precise instead of requiring a physical mix of pigment or ink.
Reliable at scale
A failed saturation job costs nothing; the platform retries automatically up to three times and only reports an error once those attempts are exhausted, so automated pipelines don't silently lose images or get charged for nothing. There's no free tier and no trial waiting list slowing anyone down, prepaid balance starts the job immediately, and a clear 402 response is the only thing standing in the way otherwise.
What you can do with it
Food and lifestyle photography
A delivery app slightly boosts saturation on restaurant photos in bulk so dishes look consistently appetizing across thousands of vendor uploads.
Catalog color consistency
A fashion retailer normalizes saturation across product photos shot on different days and lighting setups so the whole catalog reads as one cohesive shoot.
Editorial mood control
A publishing platform desaturates archival photos slightly to give them a calmer, more editorial tone that fits a specific section's visual identity.
User-generated content cleanup
A social app auto-adjusts saturation on flat, dull user uploads to make them more visually engaging before they appear in a public feed.
FAQ
What does the image saturation API change?
It adjusts how intense or muted the colors in an image appear, independent of brightness and hue, via a numeric value sent to POST /image/saturation.
Is the image saturation API free?
There's no free tier — free tiers get abused and slow everyone down. Access runs on a prepaid ForHosting KIT balance: top up from $10.00 (it never expires) and each request is charged at its published price, so a call with no balance returns HTTP 402. No subscription, no tokens, no invented credits, and a failed task is never charged.
How much does adjusting saturation cost?
Each call costs $0.002 per request plus $0.005 per image, and you're billed only when the adjustment completes successfully.
Can I desaturate an image toward black and white?
Yes, pushing the saturation value low enough moves the image toward monochrome, though for a dedicated grayscale conversion our grayscale endpoint is the more precise tool.
What happens if a saturation request fails?
Nothing is charged. The system retries automatically up to three times before returning a clear error.
Can I process an entire product catalog at once?
Yes, each image is submitted as its own asynchronous call, so you can fan out large batches in parallel rather than processing them one at a time.
Does adjusting saturation affect brightness?
No, saturation is a distinct axis from brightness, so a well-implemented adjustment changes color intensity without darkening or lightening the image.
How do I get the adjusted image back?
Through a signed webhook for automated pipelines, or a signed link valid for 24 hours for manual retrieval, after which the file is deleted.
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, and soon from our app, email and Telegram.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/image/saturation \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"image":"https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/image/saturation", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"image": "https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/image/saturation",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"image": "https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/image/saturation", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"image":"https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"image":"https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/image/saturation", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"image": "https://ejemplo.com/imagen.jpg"
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "image.saturation",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_mb | 15 |
max_megapixels | 12 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |