hello I'm Robin Whalley welcome to lenscraft recently I've had
an email from someone wanting to know about how to change the color of an
object in Photoshop today I'm going to demonstrate three easy ways you can do
this each method has advantages and drawbacks so depending on your image you
may want to try each or even a combination of the three the image I'll
be using for this is this snowy post box scene the first tool we'll look at is
the color replacement brush you can select this from the tools palette in
Photoshop where it's grouped with the other brush tools before you use this
tool you should create a new layer to work on this is a destructive edit so
it's always going to be best to work on a copy of the image as my image only has
the background layer I'll duplicate it using command + J on my keyboard if your
image has several layers you may want to consolidate them all onto a new stamp
layer by pressing shift option command and E now if you're using a PC that
shift control Alt and E after selecting the tool pick the new color that you want to
apply to the image there are a few options you can use to configure the
brush which can also affect the quality of the results as always with a brush
base tool you can set the size and hardness of the brush which may make it
easier to work with but the main adjustment controls that you want to set
at to the right of these in the context sensitive toolbar first is the mode this
needs to be set to the color blending mode because I want to use the brush to
sample the color of the postbox and replace it with a new color
then there are three sampling modes which determine how the brush will
sample or identify the color to be replaced when I have the sampling set to
continuous the brush is continuously sampling the area I paint over this is
useful for covering a large area of color but it can spill over into other
areas if the brush moves over something by accident a good example of this is if
I accidentally brush over the snow it will change the color in that area if
you find this is happening you may want to use this
Paul wants options for that area no when I first clicked with the brush it takes
an initial sample from that area this sample is then retained until I release
the mouse button now as I paint with the brush it
supplies the new color over any color that match is my initial sample I can
even paint over the snow and it won't change the color
now the accuracy of the color replacement is being controlled by the
tolerance setting the wider the tolerance then the less precise the
color replacement will be in other words the brush will change a wider range of
colors may that might be a good thing depending on the image you're working
with if you want to work with a greater precision dup you'll need to use a lower
tolerance that however could make it difficult to brush over areas and
replace a lot of color despite its limitations the color replacement brush
can be surprisingly effective now the second method that you could use to
change the color of an object in Photoshop is the replace color
adjustment this is also another destructive edit so as with the color
replacement brush you should create a new layer to work with you can select
the adjustment in the image adjustments menu where you'll find a replace color
option this displays the replace color dialog the first thing to do is sample
the color that you want to replace using the eyedropper tools at the top there
are three of these I drop the sampling tools that you can use to do this the
first on the Left takes a sample each time you click with it
if for example I use it to sample the red of the postbox but then sample the
white of the snow the second sample I've taken replaces the first notice that as
I click to make the sample it updates the preview the preview is showing me
the areas I've selected in white these are the areas where the color will be
replaced in this example you can see that although I've selected the postbox
of their areas of the image are also selected that's because they include an
element of red that's similar to the postbox you can control the precision of
this selection using the fuzziness slider this will probably be easier to
see if I change the color of the post box using
the hue slider
when the fuzziness slider is over to the left the selection is very precise as I
move the fuzziness slider over to the right the selection becomes broader and
less accurate most of the time you probably won't be able to create a good
selection using a single sample that's when you can use the app to sample
eyedropper by making an additional sample with this you can improve the
selection if you find your adjustments still spills over into other areas
try restricting it using the fuzziness slider
additionally you can use the subtract from sample eyedropper to remove that
color
once you're reasonably happy with you selection apply the adjustment if you
then want to further restrict the selection try using a mask for example I
could select the outline of the postbox now using a rectangular marquee tool if
I then add a mass to this layer it converts the selection we've made into a
new layer mask this ensures that only the postbox displays the adjustment we
made you can also use math to tidy up over areas for example and might want to
add back the red lettering on the notice
now let's look at the third adjustment method this is a two-step process and
has the advantage of being non-destructive step one is to first
create a new color range selection using select and color range from the
Photoshop menu this displays the color range dialog although you can select a
color range from the drop-down we want to use the sample color option this
allows us to use a sampling eyedroppers to pick the color we want to replace you
should recognize the three eyedropper sampling tools from the previous method
and these working just the same way I'll start by sampling the pump's box and
then controlling the accuracy of the selection using the fuzziness slider
this also works in the same way as in the replace color adjustment we looked
at earlier as I'm making my selection you can see a grayscale image
indicating the selection if you don't want to use a grayscale selection there
are other options in this drop-down
you can also switch the thumb in the dialogue between the image and
the selection which can be helpful once you've created your selection click the
ok' button you can now see the selected area outlined by the Photoshop marching
ants now for the second step where we want to add a hue and saturation
adjustment layer when the new way is added it also converts the selection
into a layer mask if I hold down my option key and click on the thumbnail
you can see the new layer mask now I can use the hue slider to change the postbox
to a new color although the color range tool usually creates a good selection
you may find it spills over into other areas of your image for example the red
writing on the notice is now green if you find areas like this you can paint
over them on the layer mask with black and it hides them
I think this final method probably offers the most flexibility and is
certainly my personal favorite despite this you may still find times when the
other tools work better depending on what you're trying to do and the image I
hope you found this video helpful if you have please share it with others
I'm Robin Whalley you've been watching lenscraft I'll see you soon for another
video