Hi Welcome back to the Photoshoptrainingchannel.com
I'm Jesus Ramirez In this video, I'm going to show you how to
match specific colors to anything in Photoshop We're going to use a technique that you probably
haven't seen before I was sitting around thinking about blending
modes and how they worked, then I realized that you could use 'em to color match, and
that's what I'm going to show you in this tutorial
I'm going to show you two different examples.
In the first example, we're going to just look at two simple squares, and I'm going
to show you the principles, and you're going to see how we're going to match those two
squares Then, we're going to move into a more complicate
image, so that you can see what happens with an actual photo, and the different problems
that you can run into and how you can solve those problems
And before we get started, I just want to ask you to please click on that like button,
if you find the technique useful Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop
Training Channel, then don't forget to click on that subscribe, and notification buttons
Okay. Let's get starte!
This is the file that we're going to start with
This is going to be the simple example, where we're going to take a look at the technique
Then, we'll move into a more complicated example, so you can see it in practice, with an actual
photo So, we have three layers
We have just a simple white background, a blue box, which is going to be the color that
we're trying to match onto this yellow box You can see the labels new and original
You don't really have to name your layers this way if you don't want to
But, this makes it more clear for the tutorial.
Before we do anything, I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page and that
we all understand how colors work in Photoshop If you double click on the foreground color
picker, the color picker comes up of course, and we can see how the components for every
color work All the colors inside of Photoshop have three
components Hue, saturation, and brightness
You can see those here The hue is simply the color, so what color
something is, so you can see the H label here So, is something blue, green, yellow, red,
or any other color?
What color is it?
Saturation is how intense that color is At 100%, the intensity is at its maximum and
of course if I drag this point to the left, the intensity decreases
So, that's saturation.
And finally, brightness How bright something is
Is it really bright at 100%, or, completely black at zero percent
So, we have to keep these components in mind, when we color match
And a technique that I came up with, I think is both powerful and yet, easy to understand
for beginners So, let me show you how that works
We have the two boxes, and we want to make this yellow box, into a blue box
I'm going to create a new layer, right above that yellow box, and I'm going to fill it
with the color that I want to convert it to So, I'm going to select the eyedropper tool,
to select that blue That blue is now my foreground color, which
means that I can fill the layer by pressing alt and backspace
That's option-delete on the MAC, to fill with the foreground color.
Remember the components that we talked about?
They're actually found in the blending modes dropdown
See that hue, saturation, and luminosity, also known as brightness
So, we want to make sure that these three components match onto the new layer
And, one of the easiest ways of doing that is by taking advantage of the color blending
mode, which applies both hue and saturation at the same time
So, we already applied two of the components that make up this blue, just by selecting
this blending mode Then, I can clip this layer to the layer below
by pressing Ctrl Alt G, Command Option G on the Mac, and that means that this layer
is only affecting the layer below.
The only thing we need to worry about now is, the third and final component
We already matched hue and saturation Now, we need to match brightness
To do so, I'm going to click on the original color, and create a levels adjustment layer
I'm going to right click and delete the layer mask
I don't really need to do that, but I'm doing it, so that you can see how this works
And, I'm also going to name my layers So, this layer is set to luminosity, and it
controls the brightness And the layer above that controls both the
hue and saturation.
What I'm going to do now is match the luminosity, and it's actually quite simple to do
I'm just going to click on the top most layer and create a black and white adjustment layer
to make everything black and white So, we remove the hue and saturation, and
we only see the brightness of the image Then, I'll select the blue layer, and press
V on the keyboard to select the mood tool and place it right next to it, so that I could
have 'em side-by-side, so that when I adjust the levels, adjustment layer, I can match
these much easier With the levels, adjustment layer selected,
I'm going to click on the white point and drag to the left, make it darker, right about
here, right when the luminosity matches, like so
Then, I can disable the black and white adjustment layer, and these two layers created the blue
that we want to color mach Remember, readjusting the three components
to get the exact color that we want.
Let me show you how this works, on an actual image now
Okay, now we're going to take this technique and apply it into a much more complicated
scenario so that you can see how you can tackle challenges when they arise
Okay, so we have this layer, which is the color that we're going to use to apply to
the stress The first step is to duplicate this layer,
so I'm going to hold alt-option on the MAC and drag down
I just want to copy of that circle, and we're going to fill it with the old color
I'm going to select the eyedropper tool, which allows you to click and drag and select colors
I'm not going to click on a shadow, because I don't want to dark red, and I'm not going
to click on a highlight, because I don't want a bright red
I want more or less the actual red of the dress.
Also, make sure that you have something like 5 x 5 or 11 X 11 average selected
This allows you to get an average of the pixels that you select
If you select 11 X 11, when you click, you will not select the color of the pixel that
you selected Instead, you will select a grid that is 11
pixels by 11 pixels, and Photoshop will average those colors into a single color
So, that's what I'm doing I just want to average of the red that I click on.
So, the red that I want to click on is this one here, which is right in the center of
her body, which is not a highlight, and it's not a shadow
Then, I'm going to click on this icon, to lock the transparent pixels
You could also tap the forward slash key, to enable and disable the transparency
Then, I'm going to fill with the foreground color, which is a red that we selected
Alt-backspace-option-delete on the MAC I'm going to unlock the transparent pixels,
then select the move tool, and click and drag on the red circle and place it over the blue circle.
What I'm going to do now is, create a layer and fill it with the new color
Alt-backspace-option-backspace on the MAC And, I'm going to change the blending mode
to color and I'm going to press control-alt-G, command-option-G on the MAC, to make that
into a clip and mask, so that this layer only affects the layer below and I'll call it color,
which is applying every member, the hue and saturation components.
Now, we just got to worry about the brightness of that color
So, I'm going to create a black and white adjustment layer, so that we can de-saturate
the image, and see the difference in luminesce values
Then, above the old layer, below the color layer, I'm going to create a levels adjustment
and even though it's not necessary, I'm going to change the blending mode to luminosity,
is just a good habit That way you know that this layer is only
affecting luminosity Again, you don't have to delete the layer
mask, but I'm going to do so, just to keep things more organized, and I'll call the layer
brightness, and I'm going to make that layer brighter, so that it matches the blue
If I disable a layer, you'll notice that the adjustment layers match the blue onto the red circle.
What I'll do now, is select these two layers, by holding shift and clicking on them and
then pressing control-alt-G to remove the clipping mask
And then, I'll press control-G, command-G on the MAC, to put them into a group
And I'll just call this group, blue, because this is making that blue color that we want
And you can already see how that blue is going to look on this dress.
And what I'm going to do now is simply select the dress
I'll disable these layers, just so that they're not distracting
And, I'll click on the quick selection tool, and selecting the background layer and clicking
and dragging to select the dress I don't need a perfect selection at this point,
I just want to select the dress and then I can fine tune it when I'm done
With the selection active, I'm just going to click on the blue group, and I'm jus going
to click on the layer mask icon to create the layer mask
And, Photoshop applies that color onto the layer.
Now, you might be thinking the color is a little bright
Why is that happening?
If I enable the blue circle, and drag it over on top of the layer stack, then drag the circle
over the dress, you'll see that we did a really good job color matching it
The problem is, that the image of course has shadows and highlights, so the color can't
be that bright, because if it's that bright, then the color is really flat.
Let me show you what I mean by that If I double click to the side of the layer,
I can create a gradient overlay, and I have a blending mode of luminosity with this grading
going from light gray to black, which creates that effect there
If I press okay, you'll see that when you start introducing highlights and shadows,
you no longer will have that same flat, bright color
And that's what happened here.
What we can do to fix that, is go into the brightness, which is this here, and just bring
back some of the shadows, so I can double click to the side of the layer, and click
and drag on the underlying layer, black point and drag it to the right
Hold alt-option on the MAC, and click to split 'em in half, and that way you get a smoother
transition between the visible and invisible pixels
And now, you'll see that the color matches even better.
I can drag that over here and you can see that the highlights match, the shadows match
If I disable the effects, you can see that we still have a pretty close color match
Obviously, we can't have the background be as bright as this color, just because in this
scene, this model is in a very dark room, so obviously the color wouldn't be as bright
And by the way, if you don't know how to use the BLEND IF in Photoshop, no worries
I have a tutorial that covers everything you want to know about BLEND IF
I'll place a link right below in the description.
Another thing that I want to point out is that a lot of times you might simply complete
the job by creating a color layer, so fill it with the color that you want to match,
and set the blending mode to color, which will match the hue and saturation and you
will just use the luminosity from the original layer, or you can adjust the brightness if
you like Just to match it better
It's up to you.
At this point, what you would do is simply zoom into the image and just fix these little
mistakes You can go into the layer mask of the blue
group and simply paint with white, in areas where you want to reveal the effect
Remember?
White reveals and black conceals So, yo just got to go in there and fine tune
all these little details Obviously, I'm not going to spend the time
to do that in this tutorial, but you can see that just by making that simple adjustment,
the image is already looking much better Also, if you don't know how to mask images
in Photoshop or how you can fix those imperfections on the edges, I have a video on masking
I will also place a link down below in the description so that you can watch that and
see how you can create smooth selections.
Now, before I finish the tutorial, I just want to explain why I didn't simply use a
hue and saturation adjustment layer, which will actually work and I'm just going to take
the mask from this blue layer So, I'm going to hold alt-option on the MAC
Click and drag the duplicate the layer mask onto the hue and saturation
Yes, I want to replace it So, now I have the same layer mask on both,
the blue group and the hue and saturation And, what this adjustment layer allows you
to do is to colorize an image, and look at the controls
Hue, saturation, and lightness.
So I can control what color the dress is, the intensity of that color and the brightness
And the reason that I didn't use this to start is, because we already had a color in mind
We had that specific color, so I don't have to spend a lot of time fine tuning the hue
and saturation to approximate this blue, because I can simply use a blending mode, and all
I have to worry about is the lightness, otherwise known as brightness or luminosity, and of
course, I use a levels adjustment layer for that
And that's how you can color match in Photoshop using blending modes.
If you enjoyed that technique, don't forget to click on that like button
Also, let me know in the comments what you thought about this technique
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watch, so I really would appreciate your thoughts on this technique
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Thank you so much for watching, and I will talk to you again in the next video.