in this video we look at an easy way to replace a color in a photo I'll be using Adobe Photoshop
2023 for this but you can use the same technique with older versions too here's a photo of a
classic American car that I shot a few years back it's a stunning car but I want to see it
in a different color so let's use this technique to change the yellow paint we start by going to
the adjustments panel in Photoshop which shows the icons for the different adjustment layers we can
use you may have your panel configured to show a list of adjustments rather than just these icons
click the Hue saturation icon to add the adjustment layer to the image you can now see
this in the layers window above the original image now with the new Hue saturation layer
selected go to the Photoshop properties panel this is where we can see the layer controls
we can then use the Hue slider to replace the color of the car unfortunately this changes all
the colors in the image and not just the yellow that's because we have the master option selected
in this drop down instead we want to choose the color to replace in a list which for this image
is yellow but suppose you can't easily identify the color you want to replace in this list that's
where this picker tool comes in useful click the icon once to activate it and then click on the
color that you want to replace this causes the drop down list to change to the sampled color
range something else that you might find useful is that if you click and drag right with the Picker
you increase that color saturation or drag left to remove the saturation when you have the color
selected in the list click the icon a second time to deactivate the tool we can then move
the Hue slider to change the color of the car we can also use the saturation slider to increase the
color saturation because that's a little dull the only problem now is that although we're replacing
the yellow of the car it's also affecting other yellow objects in the rest of the image what we
need is a way to limit the color replacement to only the car the way we can do this is by using
the mask attached to the Hue saturation layer now there are a couple of options we have for doing
this but we'll use the brush tool because it's easy and gives a lot of control first click the
layer mask in the layers panel to ensure that it's selected then if you check the properties
panel you can see the mask controls one of these is a button to invert the mask click this once and
The Mask changes from white to black hiding the replacement color on the car next select the brush
tool and set the hardness opacity and flow to all be 100 we also need to set the brush color to use
white if the foreground and background colors in Photoshop are set to something other than black
and white you can reset them by pressing D on your keyboard if you then want to switch between
painting with black and white you can press X be sure to check that you still have the layer mask
selected in the layers window before starting to paint then paint with white over the area where
you want to replace the color as you paint you will see the area changes to the new color work
over the areas where you want to replace the color changing your brush size and magnification as you
paint you can use the square bracket keys on your keyboard to change the brush size the right square
bracket increases the brush whilst the left square bracket reduces it if you paint over
an area by accident switch to painting with black by pressing X you can then paint out the change by
painting black onto the mask after that press X again to switch back to painting with white
whilst painting with the brush tool gives a lot of control it can be slow another way to select the
car is using Photoshop select subject command if you want to know how that works watch this video
next where I use it to blur the background in a photo thanks for watching today and I hope you've
enjoyed the video don't forget to subscribe if you haven't ready I'll see you soon for another video