In this video, I'm going to show you how to change the color of anything in Photoshop.
Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training Channel
I'm Jesus Ramirez In this video, I'm going to show you four
different examples of how to change the color or replace the color of anything in Photoshop.
We're going to start with a basic example, but then we're going to move on to advanced
techniques that will help you in those difficult projects
At the very end, I have a really cool Blend If trick that I think you're going to enjoy
It allows you to convert a Blend If transparency into a Layer Mask.
Okay, let's get started We're going to work with this document that
contains a single layer Now before we do anything else, I want to
show you two things really quick I just want to get them out of the way
Number one is a couple terms that I want you to understand
I don't know if you know them or not, but I want to make sure that we're all on the
same page So, I'm going to double click on the foreground
color picker, and I'm going to talk about hue, saturation, and brightness
And really, that's what this video's all about, changing the hue, saturation, and brightness
of colors to make them into different colors.
So, what is Hue?
Hue is this slider here that basically allows you to select a color
It is measured in degrees from zero to 360 Once it gets to 360, it goes back to zero,
meaning it's red again So, that's hue
And you can click on that input box and use the up and down arrow keys to change it, hold
shift and the up and down arrow keys, and it increases in increments of 10.
Then we have saturation So, let me select the color here
Saturation, notice that it's at 100, but if I use the down arrow key, you'll notice that
the saturation decreases and that circle moves over to the left
So, this is a visual representation of what saturation is.
Then we have brightness, and I think that's the easiest one to understand
If we go up, the color becomes brighter If we go down, the color becomes darker
So, I think that's pretty easy to understand So, I just want to make sure that we all understand
what I mean by hue, saturation, and brightness.
Okay I'm going to cancel this, and I'm going to
talk about one other thing Nested under the brush tool, you'll find the
color replacement tool Now this is a tool that I don't necessarily
use too often, but I'm pretty sure that somebody will ask about it in the comments, So, I'm
sort of answering that question now before it comes up
And the color replacement tool allows you to select a foreground color, So, we'll select
blue, and then paint over the area that we want to replace
And it actually does a really good job Notice that I'm not being very precise
Photoshop is finding the edges for me as it's replacing that red color with this blue color.
The problem with this tool is that you're working destructively, which means that you're
destroying the original pixels Also, it doesn't give you lot of control to
adjust this tool As you can see, you just paint over the original
pixels, and that's it So, that's the reason why I don't like the
color replacement tool But feel free to use it if it works for your
needs.
What I'm going to do in this tutorial is show you examples that are more flexible, and that
should work for a lot of different situations.
So, we're going to start with the basic example first
And the first thing that you should do is click on the Quick Selection tool.
Make a selection around the object whose color you want to change, in this case this red
shirt.
And I don't have to be very precise because I'm going to be working with adjustment layers,
and you can always come back and edit them if you need to
So, with this selection active, I'm simply going to go into the new adjustment layer
icon and select hue and saturation This is going to create a hue and saturation
adjustment layer, which controls those three things that we just talked about a moment
ago: hue, saturation, and brightness.
And I can edit this Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer to change the color of the shirt
I can simply click and drag the hue slider left or right to change the hue
I can also adjust the saturation and lightness of this color.
So, once you make your adjustments, you may need to come back and edit your mask
So, I'm going to zoom in and notice how the mask was not perfect
I can click on the layer mask, and then paint with the brush tool using white to reveal
the effect or paint with black to conceal the effect
And I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of time fine tuning the selection because it's
not really important to the tutorial But just realize that in your images, you
will need to fine tune the selections.
I'm going to double click on the hand tool to see the entire image
Now I'm going to show you another way in which you can change the color, and that is by either
creating a solid color adjustment layer, blue is okay for this example, or create a new
layer and paint with the brush tool In this case, we're just going to use the
solid color adjustment layer, but it would be the same thing if I were actually painting
on a layer.
So, I'm going to apply the hue saturation adjustment layer mask to this layer, just
to save a little time So, I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac,
click and drag that layer mask and drop it in there
Photoshop is going to ask me if I want to replace it
Yes, I do.
And there it is.
Now you can use two blending modes to change the color of something
You can use hue or color The difference is that the hue blending mode
only changes the hue of the image, not the luminance, and not the saturation
Color changes both the hue and saturation In most cases, I prefer to use color, because
you can always come in here and adjust the saturation if need by dragging left or right
And then, of course, you can change the color if you want to
And you can press OK.
Now how do we make a white or black shirt?
To do so, you can simply create a hue and saturation adjustment layer, and reduce the
saturation And we want to apply the same layer mask
But we're actually going to do something else We're actually going to create a group and
apply the layer mask onto that group, and then I can put the Hue and Saturation Adjustment
Layer in there And we're going to apply the layer mask into
the group.
So, that one layer mask can control the different adjustment layers that are going to be in
there.
Because to get a realistic white or black shirt effect, we're going to need more than
one adjustment layer.
So, we have this group that contains the hue and saturation adjustment layer, and I'm just
going to delete that layer mask So, you can see that we're really not using it
So, I brought the saturation all the way down Then I can create a levels adjustment layer
And once again, we don't need that layer mask You don't need to delete the layer mask, but
I'm doing it So, that it's clear that the grouped layer mask is controlling the visibility
of all the layers.
So, we have this levels adjustment layer, and we can then control the black and white
points If I click and drag the black point to the
right, I can make a black shirt, and then drag this center point to control the contrast
of the shirt Or I can click and drag the white point to
the left, and then control the center point to adjust the contrast of the white shirt.
Now you will have to do some fine tuning on the mask, but that is very simple
All you need to do is go into the group layer mask, select it, make sure that the focus,
the white outline, is around the layer mask thumbnail, and then paint with white to reveal
that effect.
And again, I'm not going to spend time fine tuning the layer mask, but you get the idea
I'm going to double click on the hand tool, and this is how the white shirt looks.
What I'm going to do now is merge down into a single layer
So, I'm going to press Control E, Command E on the Mac, just to collapse it all into
one layer So, now we have a white shirt.
So how do we make a white shirt into a red or blue shirt?
What you need to do is use a color fill adjustment layer, and let me show you why
If you simply use the hue and saturation adjustment layer, and you try to change the hue or saturation,
nothing will happen in terms of adding color Of course, the shirt can become black, but
I really can't add any color You can click on Colorize, and then try to
fine tune it to get a color But I think that it's easier to use a color
fil adjustment layer So, it's up to you what you use, but just
So, you can see a different technique, we have this color fill adjustment layer.
And changing the blending mode to color or hue really won't give you the result that
you want However, if we change the blending mode to
multiply, we apply the color and the luminance of that layer onto the white shirt
So, now we can just select a different color for the shirt
So, that's another technique that you can use to color a shirt
One thing I want to mention is that if the shirt is a dark color, then you will want
to use Screen instead of Multiply.
Now we're going to work on a different example that will be a little more complicated, but
I think that you can follow along So, I'm going to work with this file here
of this woman wearing a plaid shirt And if we wanted to change the red stripes
on her plaid to a different color, it would be too difficult to simply select the quick
selection tool and just select those specific reds
It would take way too long, and you probably wouldn't be able to get a good selection.
So, a technique that I recommend using is creating the Hue and Saturation Adjustment
Layer and taking advantage of the direct selection tool, which is this one here
You can click on that And then you can click on the color that you
want to change, and use the hue slider to change it
And then you can, of course, use saturation and lightness.
Now here's a little trick for you I'm going to reset the adjustment layer, and
I'm going to hold Control, that's Command on the Mac, and click
And notice how I'm changing the hue of that color I selected?
If I just click and drag without holding any keys, I change the saturation of the color
that I clicked on.
Also, I want you to notice one thing I'm going to reset the adjustment layer
Notice how the label reads Master, but if I click, it selects the reds
If I click on the drop down, you'll see that we have reds, yellows, greens, cyans, blues,
and magentas So, this picker allows us to select the color,
and it automatically selects it from the drop down
And also notice the bottom part of the properties panel
We have these two points that tell us that the color that we selected is in between there
and that those colors will be changed when we adjust any one of these sliders.
And then we have the two end points, which simply means that between the end point and
this center point, we're going to have a gradual transition of colors, So, it won't be a complete
transition So, that's what that means here
So, notice that if I select her lips, it'll select reds, and obviously clicking on here,
it also selects reds And by the way, we can adjust this, and I'll
show you how in a moment.
I'm going to click on the red part of the plaid shirt while holding Control, Command
on the Mac, and then drag to change this to blue
Then I'm going to zoom in, and you'll see that we didn't quite select all the colors,
but we can click and drag these points to add to the selection
So, now we selected more of those colors.
I'm going to fit the image to screen, So, we can see it all
And obviously, the final step is just to isolate that adjustment to the shirt
I'm not going to spend much time making the selection
It's the same step that we did before You can use the quick selection tool like
we did in the previous example, but in this case, I want to save a little bit of time
So, we're going to use a pre-made selection that I made off camera
So, I'm going to load that selection by holding Control, Command on the Mac, and just applying
it to that adjustment layer So, there it is
And you can of course always come back and make adjustments to that color if need be.
One thing that I want to point out is that if you hover over this icon, you can see the
keyboard shortcuts Click and drag to modify saturation, and Control
click to modify hue That's Command on the Mac.
For the next example, I'm going to show you how you can target a specific color, make
it into a selection, and then change this color in case you need a layer mask to contain
that color So, I know it sounds a little confusing, but
let me show you what I mean.
We're going to work with this document And if we wanted to change the color of this
back here in the back but nothing else, then using the quick selection tool for that job
wouldn't give us the best result There is a lot of detail that we want to preserve
So, one of the best things that you can do is use the color itself to make the selection
And you can do So, by going into Select, Color Range
And if you select Image, you will see the image itself in the preview window
Or you can click on Selection.
Then you can just click on the color that you want to select and click on this eyedropper
with the plus sign to add colors to that selection But as you noticed, it's selecting different
areas of the image, and I don't want that I only want to select this bag
So, I'm going to cancel, and I'm going to simply freehand a selection using the lasso
tool So, I'm going to click around that light,
and just hover over the areas that contain the color that I want to select
So, I'm pre-defining a selection.
Then I'm going to go back into Select, Color Range
Now notice the preview It only contains that area
And don't worry, the light won't be selected So, at this point, I can just set my target
color, move over into the selection view, and then just add to my selection
So, I'm clicking and dragging to add all those oranges to my selection
You can adjust the fuzziness lighter, which expands or contracts the selection, and then
press OK And notice how Photoshop only selected the
oranges of this bag.
Then I can create a group and apply a layer mask based on that selection
Then I can create adjustment layers inside of that group
Hue and saturation is inside of that group So, if I move the hue slider, I will change
the color only of that bag And this becomes really useful now because
we can start loading adjustment layers inside of that group, and it will only affect the
areas that we selected So, we can even apply a texture, for example
So, I can go into the pattern fill, select this pattern, press OK, change the blending
mode to soft light, and maybe reduce the opacity So, now that bag has a different color and
a pattern And of course, I can adjust the color of that
bag if need be.
For the next example, I want to show you how to change the color of objects that are difficult
to select So, we're going to use this image of this
tree And what we're going to do is try to change
the leaves to a different color So, maybe you want to give this tree red leaves
because you're working on some sort of alien planet composite or something like that
But the point is that we want to select the leaves
So, how do you select them?
I'm going to show you a really cool trick using Blend If that I'm really sure you're
going to like So, I want to start by duplicating the layer
Then I'm going to hide the bottom layer And I'm going to double click to the side
of the layer to bring up the layer style [inaudible 00:15:39]
And I'm going to use the Blend Ifs lighters.
Now if you don't know what Blend If is, don't worry
I have an eight-minute crash course here on YouTube that you can watch for free
I'll post the link to it down below in the description
But basically, these sliders allow you to hide pixels based on their luminosity
So, notice that if I drag the black point to the right, I hide the dark pixels
If I drag the white point to the left, I hide the bright pixels
Also, if I hold down the Alt or Option key, you will notice how the point splits, and
I can create a smooth transition So, that is basically how it works.
I also have different channels So, I can go into the blue channel, for example,
and I can take out the blue in this image, in this case the sky
So, I'm building the selection with these sliders
I'm also going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, and split those in half and create a
smoother transition Then press OK.
Unfortunately, these are not transparent pixels If I hold Control, Command on the Mac, and
click to load the active pixels, it's going to load the entire layer
Because I'm only hiding those pixels based on their luminance values
But I can actually convert this into transparency by right clicking on the layer and selecting
Convert to Smart Object.
Look at the layer thumbnail now Do you see the transparency?
I can hold Control, Command on the Mac, and click on that layer thumbnail once again,
and this time Photoshop actually loads transparency as a selection
So, I can hide this layer, come back to my tree layer, and create a hue and saturation
adjustment layer, and Photoshop automatically applies that selection as a layer mask.
By the way, I'm curious to know if you knew that Blend If trick or not
Let me know in the comments.
But anyway, you can use a hue slider to control the colors of the selected areas and use a
rectangular marquee tool while holding Shift to add to the selection
Holding Shift adds to the selection, and holding Alt subtracts from the selection
So, remember, Shift and Alt Add and subtract
So, I'm adding to the selection in areas that I don't want to apply the effect to
With the selection active, I can come into the layer mask thumbnail, make sure that you
see the focus, the white outline around the layer mask, and fill with black
Black is currently my background color So, I can hold Control Backspace, Command
Delete on the Mac, to fill with black to hide the effect of that adjustment layer.
Now, I want to remove the effect from the branches and the bark of the tree
So, what I can do is duplicate my tree layer, Control J, Command J on the Mac, drag it on
top of the hue and saturation adjustment layer, and then we can use the technique that we
used in the previous example to select only brown from the image
So, I'm going to go into Select, Color Range You can then click on Image to make sure that
you are able to see the tree and click to select that point
And you can also click and drag to add to that selection
If you go into the selection view, you will see that we selected pretty much all the branches
and all the parts that we want to keep Then press OK, and click on the layer mask
icon to create a layer mask that targets only the brown parts of the tree
And the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer is only controlling the colors of the leaves.
The point of this example is for you to realize that you can stack multiple layers on top
of each other, and multiple adjustment layers to get the results that you need
You're not stuck with just one layer and one adjustment layer
You can do as many things as you want.
Everything looks pretty good, and you can go in there and fine tune the mask if you
need to.
Let me know in the comments which of these techniques were new to you
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that subscribe and notification buttons Thank you so much for watching, and I will
see you again in the next tutorial.