desaturated

[dee-sach-uh-rey-tid]

adjective

1. (of a color) formed by mixing a color of the spectrum with white.

Word History and Origins

Origin of desaturated¹

First recorded in 1910–15; de- + saturate + -ed ²

Example Sentences

After watching Antoine Fuqua’s “Emancipation,” a period piece about slavery starring Will Smith, the director decided on a desaturated look for the film that would reflect the emotional state of the kids’ reality.

From Los Angeles Times

Bright and bloody, sandblasted and sunworn, it has the visual crispness of the first and doesn’t bear the strange desaturated look of some of the director’s recent work.

From Los Angeles Times

The rest of the retro aesthetic is achieved with a desaturated color palette that is not well served by the digital photography and dim lighting.

From Los Angeles Times

Every exterior shot of Los Angeles has a desaturated and yellowed color correction.

From Los Angeles Times

If you dare to tune in to this movie, expect to fall teeth first into the underbelly of a gritty, desaturated dystopian mid-’90s metropolis, where every scene is muted in cyan, and red is the only color shown in its richest, purest form.

From New York Times