How to Use Chromascope in Photoshop

Photoshop gives you precise control over individual pixels, but it does not include a vectorscope. The Info panel shows color values for a single point. The Histogram panel shows luminance distribution. Neither shows you the overall chrominance distribution of your image -- where your colors sit on the color wheel, how saturated they are relative to each other, or whether distinct color populations exist.

Chromascope adds a vectorscope panel to Photoshop via the UXP plugin architecture. It reads pixels from your active document and renders a real-time chrominance plot. This guide walks through installation, the interface, and practical usage. If you are new to vectorscopes, start with What Is a Vectorscope?

Installation

Download Chromascope and locate the Photoshop plugin folder in the archive. The plugin is packaged as a UXP plugin (.ccx format).

Double-click the .ccx file to install it through the Creative Cloud app. Alternatively, you can load it manually through the UXP Developer Tool during development. After installation, Photoshop will list Chromascope under the Plugins menu.

The plugin requires Photoshop 2022 (v23.0) or later, which is when Adobe introduced the UXP panel API with the imaging capabilities Chromascope uses for pixel access.

Opening the panel

Go to Plugins → Chromascope to open the panel. It appears as a dockable panel, just like Layers or Properties. You can drag it into any panel group, resize it, or leave it floating.

Once docked, the panel persists across sessions. You do not need to reopen it each time you launch Photoshop. The vectorscope will render as soon as you have a document open with pixel content.

The vectorscope display

The vectorscope plot is a circular graph. Each pixel in your image is mapped to a position on this circle based on its color: the angle from center represents hue, and the distance from center represents saturation. Neutral grays cluster at the center. Vivid colors appear near the edge.

Chromascope supports three color space mappings: YCbCr, CIE LUV, and HSL. Each arranges hues at different angles around the circle.

YCbCr matches the traditional broadcast vectorscope layout. If you have experience with video color grading, this will feel familiar. The I-line (skin tone reference) is in the standard position.

CIE LUV is perceptually uniform: equal distances on the plot represent equal perceived color differences. This is generally the most useful mode for photography because it makes visual judgments about color balance more intuitive.

HSL maps the hue wheel directly, which can be helpful when cross-referencing with Photoshop's Hue/Saturation adjustment, since both use the same hue angle definition.

Density modes

The density mode controls how overlapping pixels are visualized on the plot. The three options are scatter, heatmap, and bloom.

Scatter draws each sampled pixel as a single dot. Where many pixels overlap, the dots accumulate additively, creating brighter areas. Scatter gives you the most detailed view of the data -- you can see individual outliers, sparse clusters, and the exact shape of color populations.

Heatmap maps pixel density to a color gradient. Areas with few pixels appear dark; areas with many pixels appear bright and warm-colored. This is useful for quickly identifying where the bulk of your color data lives.

Bloom renders each pixel with a soft radial glow. Overlapping glows blend additively, producing smooth, luminous clouds that highlight dominant color regions. Bloom is the fastest way to read the overall color balance of an image at a glance.

For a deeper comparison, see Scatter vs Bloom: Choosing the Right Display Mode.

Harmony overlays

Chromascope can overlay color harmony guides on the vectorscope. Available schemes include complementary, split-complementary, triadic, analogous, and square. Each draws geometric zones on the plot corresponding to the harmony's hue relationships.

The overlay is rotatable. Set the base hue to your image's dominant color, and the overlay will show you where the complementary (or triadic, or analogous) colors should fall. This is a visual aid for evaluating whether your image's color palette aligns with a particular harmony, or for identifying which colors to push or pull during grading.

Harmony overlays are most useful during intentional color grading. If you are trying to achieve a complementary teal-and-orange look, for example, enable the complementary overlay, rotate it to the orange-teal axis, and use it as a target while adjusting Color Balance or Selective Color layers.

Real-time updates

The Chromascope panel updates automatically when your document changes. Apply a Curves adjustment, paint on a mask, run a filter -- the vectorscope re-renders to reflect the current pixel state. The update is debounced so that rapid changes (like painting with a brush) do not cause excessive renders.

This immediate feedback is particularly valuable when working with adjustment layers. Add a Hue/Saturation layer, drag the Hue slider, and watch the color distribution rotate on the vectorscope in near-real-time. Add a Color Balance layer and watch the color mass shift. The vectorscope makes the effect of every adjustment visible in a way that the histogram cannot.

The skin tone reference line, when enabled, draws a line from the center of the scope at the expected skin tone hue angle. This is the same I-line used in broadcast video production. During portrait retouching, this line serves as a constant reference point. See Skin Tone Correction for a full walkthrough.

Tips

Dock the panel where you can see it. The value of a vectorscope comes from constant visibility. If you have to open and close it, you will not use it. Dock it in a panel group alongside your Histogram or Info panel so it is always visible while editing.

Use scatter for retouching, bloom for grading. When doing precise color work on specific areas -- skin retouching, product color accuracy -- scatter mode lets you see exactly where those colors sit. When making broad creative adjustments to the overall palette, bloom gives you a faster read.

Match HSL with the vectorscope. If you set the color space to HSL, the hue angles on the vectorscope correspond directly to the hue values in Photoshop's Hue/Saturation dialog. This makes it straightforward to identify a hue on the scope and target it with a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

Check neutral targets. If your image contains something that should be neutral gray (a gray card, a white shirt, concrete), those pixels should cluster near the center of the vectorscope. If they are offset, you have a color cast. The direction of the offset tells you which hue the cast is, and the distance tells you how strong it is.

For the complete reference of all panel settings and controls, see the Photoshop plugin documentation.