How to Select and Change Colors In Photoshop
Welcome back to another very exciting tutorial here at the PhotoshopTrainingChannel.com.
My name is Jesus Ramirez and you can find me on Instagram @JRfromPTC.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to select and change colors in Photoshop.
We're going to be using three different techniques.
The first will deal with the Color Replacement Tool.
It's a tool that you probably haven't used before, but it can be very powerful.
Then, I want to show you how you can use the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer so that
you can work non-destructively and change the colors of objects in your image and if
you change a line, you can always go back and easily make edits to those adjustments.
Okay, let's get started with the tutorial.
So the first method that I'm going to show you is how to use a tool that you probably
never used before.
It's the Color Replacement Tool, which is nested under the Brush Tool.
If you click on that tool, you can set a foreground color to use as your source color.
So I'm going to double click on the foreground color picker.
I'm going to click on the beanie hat and I want to click and drag this up to select a
red that has the same luminosity, and, maybe, make even make it just a little bit darker,
so I'm going to click and drag this down, and then, I'm going to press OK.
With the Color Replacement Tool selected, I'm going to make sure that I have Color under
Mode and under Limits, find Edges, so when you click and drag in an area, you'll notice
that the colors will change to the color in the foreground.
Now the good thing about this tool is that I can increase the size of the brush, so I'm
tapping on the right bracket key on the keyboard and I can keep painting, and notice that I
don't really go outside of that blue line because Photoshop knows that I'm trying to
replace this blue color, and there is no blue found on her face or in the background.
The downside of this tool is that I'm working destructively, as you can see on this layer
here, so I'm going to Undo those changes.
If you wanted to use this tool, what I recommend you do so you work non-destructively is use
the Lasso Tool to make a selection around the object whose color you want to change,
in this case, the beanie hat.
Then press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to Duplicate that selection.
So, now, we have a layer that contains the beanie hat, then you can use the Color Replacement
Tool again.
But to be frank with you, there's better ways of changing colors in Photoshop.
This is just an easy tool to use but the downside is that if we decided to use green as the
color, we would have to come in and paint everything all over again, and that just takes
too much time.
But for something small and quick, this tool will be just fine.
But if you want to have more control, there's better alternatives.
So it's better to have flexibility when working in Photoshop.
So what I'm going to do now is show you two different methods that I like using for changing
colors of things.
So what we're going to do first is make a selection around the beanie hat.
I'm going to click on the Quick Selection Tool, come over to the hat, click and drag,
and just create a very quick selection.
As you can see there, that was really very quick.
I'm going to Zoom In by tapping on the Z key and then clicking, just so I can deselect
some of these areas that shouldn't be selected, so I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac,
and click and drag to subtract from the selection.
And I'm not going to spend too much time here, you get the idea, and that's going to be okay
for this example.
So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to Zoom Out, Fit to Screen, and I'm going to
create a new adjustment layer—a Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer.
Then, I can click and drag on the Hue Slider to change the color of the beanie.
Now the problem is that not all the colors change at the same time.
Notice that we have some orange and then some yellow.
If you have this issue, you can solve it by clicking on the Colorize check box here and
it colorizes the entire area, so then I can find a red color that I want to use, maybe
something like this, add a little more saturation, make it a little bit darker, maybe bring down
the saturation a bit, so something like that.
I'm just looking for something that matches the scene.
But, anyway, so now that we have this set-up.
We can always come back and make changes if you want to.
We want to make her hat green, we can do that, and we can make all types of adjustments because
we're using an adjustment layer and a layer mask.
Now, what I would do if this were a real project is Zoom In on parts of her hair, like this
one here, and just fix them by painting with black on the layer mask.
So we'll select the Brush Tool, and with white I reveal, with black I conceal.
So with black, I would paint in areas like that strand of hair and just go around the
entire area here, making sure that there's no green spilling on to her face.
Obviously, I'm not going to take the time to do that in this tutorial, but that's something
that you definitely should do with your image.
Now, what if we want to make this into sort of a Christmas theme where her hat is green
and also the blue on her shirt is green?
One of your initial thoughts might be to use the Select Color Range feature in Photoshop,
which allows you to select the color, and then, find similar colors around the image,
and select those.
Now, the problem with that is there are so many different shades of blue here that you're
really not going to be able to get a good selection.
A solution for a problem like that is to use the Hue and Saturation slider again, but this
time, take advantage of the slider here.
So if I click on it, I can hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac, and click anywhere on this image,
and adjust the color that I click on.
In this case, if I click on the hat, the color is blue.
Watch what happens when I hold Ctrl, Command on the Mac, then click and drag.
Notice that I can change the color of her hat to green, but also, the other blues in
the image turned green as well, then I can control exactly which shades of blue.
Notice these gradients here.
This is telling us exactly what's happening.
We're taking these blues here on top and converting them into the green here on the bottom, and
you could also make adjustments to those.
Notice that in some areas, I'm not quite getting all the greens in there; there's still some
blue.
Well, I can click and drag this icon to the left and it pops here on to the other side,
then I can continue clicking and dragging on that.
And notice that now I'm selecting more of the colors on the hat and in the shirt, and
I can do the same thing on the other side if need be, but there's no reason to do that.
I can also adjust these as well.
So that's before and that's after.
And after this, you can just take a little bit more time to adjust the image.
This green is a little too colorful and saturated for the image, so what I would do is maybe
desaturate it a little bit and, maybe, darken it up just a tiny bit.
So maybe something like that will work better with this particular image.
Now, in this image, it's not really necessary, but if there were also areas of the image
that also had blue, you can simply mask those out by painting with black on the layer mask
of this Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer, but there's no blue in the background, so
there's really nothing to paint, but you can paint that if you wanted to or, maybe, if
you wanted to keep the hat blue, you will just paint with black over the hat on the
layer mask to reveal the original blue.
But that's not something we want to do in this case, so I'm just going to go ahead and
undo that.
And one other thing I want to mention is that if we go back into the Hue and Saturation
Adjustment Layer by clicking on the thumbnail here, you will see that the adjustments we
made are not going to be shown here and that's because we're now back on the master.
If you want to go back and make more adjustments to the blue, which is now green, you'll have
to select blues from the dropdown, and then, we can come back here and make adjustments
if need be.
Also, you have more options.
You have reds, yellows, greens, cyans, blues, and magentas.
So maybe you want to adjust the reds.
You can select reds and adjust the Hue and Saturation of the reds, as well as lightness,
of course.
And you can adjust this widget to select the colors that will be adjusted by the Hue, Saturation
and Lightness.
Obviously, this is not looking very good, so I'm just going to Undo the changes that
I made and go back to what I had before.
I press Ctrl Alt Z, Command Option Z on the Mac, to Undo.
And that's it for this tutorial.
I hope that you enjoyed it and that you learned something new.
If you have any comments or questions, leave them down below.
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Thank you for watching and I'll talk to you again soon.