The Replace color command in Photoshop. Four ways to change the color of a layer in Adobe Photoshop How to change the color of an object in Photoshop

Hello again, my dear readers. Today I would like to tell you how to replace a color in Photoshop with another in a separate area and even in the entire picture. After all, you probably have often had the desire to repaint something just to see how it would look. But in order not to make a mistake, it is better to first do this on some kind of layout or photograph. Then you will already know how and what it looks like. Let's see how to change the color of an object to a specific one using the example of repainting the car in the picture.

First way. Color replacement

Let's look at the simplest case, when our background is completely different from the object itself, i.e. cars.

1. So, upload a photo, picture or drawing into our editor and now go to the familiar “Image” menu. Next, select “Correction”, and then “Replace Color”.
   
2. A color replacement window opened in front of us. What are we doing here? First, let's make sure that the active tool in this window is a regular eyedropper (without signs). Now just left-click somewhere on the hood of the car.
   
3. As you can see, we have a small drawing in the window. What is colored light shows us which area will undergo a color change. Now start dragging the Hue slider. Do you see? Some of the color starts to change as you move that tone. Don't be upset that not the whole car is painted over. We'll fix it.
   
4. To begin, hold down left button mouse on the “Scatter” slider and drag it towards the larger side. Just try to make sure that the car is painted over as much as possible, while the background remains untouched. In this case, there are no yellow tints in the background, which allows me to set the maximum spread to 200.
   
5. Has the desired object changed almost all its color, but not completely? Again, no problem. Activate internal tool“Pipette+” and left-click on those areas of the car where there are unpainted areas in the picture.
   
6. Voila!) As you can see, everything worked out and even our background was not damaged. And by the way, you can also move the “Hue”, “Saturation”, “Brightness” sliders to achieve the desired shade.
   

Look. It looks like it should be. And this function can be used in different areas, for example, to replace the color of clothes, or to give an unusual but specific shade to vegetables or fruits. In! Try making a blue watermelon. Trust me. It's easy, very interesting and useful for consolidation.

Correcting Misunderstandings

Let's look at a slightly more complicated case. Let’s say I again want to change the color of the car, but this time it’s different. As you can see, the color of the car is the same as in the background. Well? Let's do everything the same as above and see what we get.

But we are doing a bad job, the background is so similar to the color of the car that neither the “Pipette-” nor reducing the spread helps. If we want ours to be purple, then our mountains will also be similar. What to do?

In such difficult situations, you will have to do a little manual work. There's really nothing wrong with this. You'll just have to use the one you know. Yes Yes. Using pens we erase failed painted objects or background, thereby leaving with a certain color only the object itself, i.e. in our case, a car.

Even better, before you start changing the color, duplicate the layer and perform all the actions on the created copy. And unnecessary details can be erased with regular . This will be better if you suddenly want to change the color later.

Second way. Blend Mode

Well, since we’re talking about repainting a car in Photoshop, I can’t help but mention another good way to carry out this action. True, here you will also have to work with your hands, since you will have to change and paint over everything. But we can easily replace the color in Photoshop with any other.

Let me load the same car as above.

1. Let's take and how we would like to paint this car. Well, let’s say I want to see it green, then I’ll choose this specific color.
2. Now create new layer by pressing the key combination SHIFT+CTRL+N. And then take a look at the Layers panel. Do you see any blending modes there? The default is normal, but open the drop-down list and select “Color” (By the way, the “Color Tone” mode is also suitable, so you can select that too). Great. Well done.
   
3. Now choose the size, shape and hardness of the brush, and go ahead! We paint the car. Just be careful not to touch too much. Well, if you hit it, then use an eraser to correct it, no big deal.
   
4. And now, if you want to change the color that you sculpted, you need to go to our again familiar “Image” menu and select “Correction” there - "Hue/Saturation". But I advise you to immediately use a simple key combination CTRL+U.
   
5. Well, in the newly opened window, you can also move the hue, saturation and brightness sliders to change the hue. It's simple.
   

Well, how do you like the lesson? Was everything clear and interesting? I hope that yes. Personally, when I learned about changing the color of an item in Adobe Photoshop, was simply delighted. If, of course, something is unclear, you can always clarify or ask. I will be glad to help as much as possible.

I would also advise you to look cool video course on photoshop. The video lessons are simply awesome, the course goes from easy to complex, everything is told in human language, nothing is missed and at the same time there is no unnecessary “water”. Everything is spot on. So be sure to check it out.

Well, I say goodbye to you today. I will be glad to see you in my other articles. Well, in order not to get lost, be sure to subscribe to my blog updates. I won’t spam - everything is just to the point, honestly. Well, you practice. See you in other lessons. Bye bye!

Best regards, Dmitry Kostin.

One way to focus the viewer's attention on this particular balloon is to reduce the saturation of the other balloons below it. I don't want to change the actual color of the balls, just the intensity. To do this with the Color Replacement Tool, I'll change the Blend Mode in the Options Bar to Saturation:

If I wanted to completely desaturate the balloons, removing their color completely, I would set the Foreground color to black, white, or any of the shades of gray, but since I want a more subtle effect, I'll just use one of the subdued colors from Images. To do this, I'll hold down the key to temporarily switch to Eyedropper Tool mode and click on the desired color. I'll choose a low saturated yellow color. The color itself doesn't matter, since the Saturation blend mode doesn't change any of the original colors. It will only affect the intensity:

So, my foreground color is set to low-saturated yellow, the blending mode is “Saturation”. Now I'll just paint over the balloons by adjusting my brush size using the left and right keys square brackets and change the tolerance value in the Options Bar as needed. The picture below shows how I paint a bright orange balloon from top to bottom:

Disadvantages of the tool: problem with the brightness of changed objects

As I wrote at the very beginning, the Color Replacement Tool cannot be used for all cases. Now I will show you this with an example.

First I'll restore the initial state my photo with balls by pressing the F12 key. Now let's say I want to change the color of the top individual orange ball to a dark purple color like some of the balls in the group:

To select a replacement color, I hold down Alt and click on the purple ball:

I set the Blending Mode in the Options Bar to Color and start painting over the orange ball to change it to a dark purple. Here's the result:

Hm. The ball turned out to be purple, of course, but this color is quite similar to the colors of other purple balls, isn’t it? The problem is that this color is much brighter than the other purple balls, and this is because the original color of the ball was much brighter than the dark purple that I used as a replacement sample. The "Color" blend mode in this case does not affect the brightness of the object in any way.

Well, then let's try to apply the blending mode that affects the brightness. Of the four available blending modes, this is “Brightness” (Luminosity). I'll restore the photo to its original state by pressing F12, selecting this mode in the options bar, and again trying to paint the ball dark purple. Result:

Well, looking at the result, we can say with confidence that the result was complete nonsense. The Brightness blend mode definitely made the ball darker, but it's still orange, not purple, and besides, the texture detail is almost gone, the ball looks like a flat blob.

This is the drawback of the Color Replacement tool. It's great for simple tasks where you only need to change the hue and/or saturation of a color, but if there are too many differences in brightness values ​​between the original and the new colors, this tool probably won't work.

Sampling for replacement

In the Options Bar, directly to the right of the Blending Mode option, there are three small icons. Each of these icons represents a different selection of pixels to replace with the Color Replacement Tool, and they work in exactly the same way as the Background Eraser Tool. From left to right: Continuous, this option is enabled by default, the next is Once, and the last is Background Swatch. To switch between selection modes, simply click on the desired icon:

These settings control how Photoshop selects pixels to replace colors in an image. If the first option, Continuous, is selected, Photoshop continually determines new colors to replace. The sample is located under the moving cursor, exactly under the crosshairs. If, when moving the cursor, another color falls under the crosshairs, it becomes the target color for replacement. All pixels of that color within the cursor circle are replaced. This sampling option is used most often and works best when there is a lot of color variation within a site.

The "Once" option takes as a sample the color that you initially selected and the sample does not change depending on how many colors you further drag the cursor crosshair through. This option is best if you need to replace a large area of ​​solid color. You can also try this option if you find that with the Continuous option, the color you are replacing is leaking into nearby areas and changing the Tolerance option does not help.

The last option, Background Pattern, is used very rarely, if at all. This option replaces any color in the image that matches background color in the color palette. This option may only be useful if neither of the first two options works.

Limits

This setting determines the location of the pixels to be replaced and works in exactly the same way as the Background Eraser. The option has three options: “All pixels” (Contiguous), “Adjacent pixels” (Discontiguous) and “Find Edges”. Of these three, you will really only use the first two:

The "Adjacent pixels" option (set by default) means that only those pixels that are directly adjacent to the cursor crosshair will be replaced. Pixels separated from pixels under the crosshairs by some other color will not be replaced, even if they are within the cursor circle and exactly match the color.

An alternative is "All pixels". With this option, all pixels matching in color and located within the cursor boundaries will be replaced.

Anti-Alias
This option is enabled by default and serves to smooth the edge around replacement areas. I recommend keeping it turned on at all times.

Hello, dear readers. Replacing colors in a picture is quite an interesting and addictive activity. Personally, I can spend quite a lot of time doing this entertainment. There are several tools that will help with this work and each of them is suitable for its own case.

Today I will tell you how to change the color of a picture in Photoshop and which method to use in each specific case. You will like it, I assure you.

It should be noted that I use Photoshop CC, but we won’t do anything specific, so you can safely start reading even if you have a simpler version of this program. Not online service, of course, it is weak and non-functional, but in cases with CS3, 5 or 6 you will not notice the discrepancies.

Let's get started?

Simple color correction

Equipment for high-quality photography is quite expensive, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have it. Receive nice pictures This can be done using editing programs such as Photoshop. To be honest, I use this opportunity for almost every photo I post on my blog. I like the colors brighter than what is usually posted on the Internet.

By the way, if you are interested, read the article already published in Start-Luck. I’ll take a pre-prepared picture to start talking about simple color correction and get to work.

I open the “Image” tab in the top menu, and then the “Correction” category. Take the time to understand from your own experience what “Brightness/Contrast”, “Richness”, “Hue/Saturation” and other options that you will find in this tab are.

You won’t spoil or break anything, and you can always return to the original version by simply refusing to save changes when closing the picture. Just look at how certain tools behave. As they say, what you come to on your own is always remembered better than when everything is explained to you on your fingers.

For example, open “Color Tone” and pull the various sliders, you will immediately see how the picture changes colors and will be able to build a logical chain between your actions and the result. Don't forget to check the "View" box.

Color balance changes colors more strongly, the settings are more subtle and interesting.

If you want to work with certain element, enough, I have already talked more than once in simple and understandable language about how to do this using more than 8 tools and methods. I won’t repeat myself, it’s not difficult to find the publication, just follow the link just above.

Now I will use the most in a simple way – « With a magic wand" I just click on the object and the desired fragment is highlighted. Using the tolerance setting, I set the variation in color.

As you know, there are many shades of white, blue and any other color. The higher the tolerance number, the more shades from the spectrum the program will determine and highlight using a wand.

Change the direction of the curve and the color becomes different.

By the way, if you want to work with the background in this way, that is, the area that is outside the selection, then you need to first select it, and then in the “Selection” tab of the top menu, select the “Inversion” option.

You can remove running ants using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+D.

Replacement by contrast

I talked about this method in great detail in the article. « » . Now we will quickly run through the main functions. I'll give you a little instructions, which will be enough.

This tool is ideal for replacing a bright, stand-out color in a picture. For example, a yellow apple on a white background, a red car in a green forest, or, as now, a bright girl in a dark room.

I return to the “Adjustments” section and select the “Color Replacement” tool here. Using the Eyedropper tool, which appears automatically, I select the shade that will change. In this case, I click on the curtain. Then I move the Scatter slider so that the girl becomes almost black, and all other objects have outlines ( I wrote a whole article about how to draw a black background).

Please note that the curtain and the wall still need to have outlines; simply setting the spread to 200 will not work. Otherwise, the program will not take into account shades and will paint everything unattractively with a single color. Now I click on the color plate at the very bottom of the window, under it it says “Result”.

I click through the spectrum and different shades until I achieve the perfect result.

Ready. Without repainting the photo, we got an excellent result. In just a few seconds. Now let's talk a little about the disadvantages. As I said above, it is convenient to use this method if the image has contrast. To repaint a particular girl's dress in a different shade, you will have to highlight it. I can offer another interesting one, in which much attention is paid to complex objects, for example, hair.

I’ll use the Magnetic Lasso tool myself.

Now I transfer the dress to a new layer by pressing Ctrl+J at the same time. ? Read the post that I recently prepared for beginners about them in detail.

We return to “Color Replacement” in the “Correction” section. In this case, you will have to change the hue using the “Hue”, “Saturation”, “Brightness” sliders. If I click on the “Result” box, it turns out extremely disgusting and implausible.

In my opinion, the shade of the young lady’s dress is still far from ideal, and therefore I want to blur it a little. I open the “Filter” tab and select everyone’s favorite “Gaussian Blur”.

The robe became less clear, but the shade evened out somewhat.

As I already said, this method works best if there are contrasts, so I’ll be satisfied with this, and I’ll tell you about the last tool for today.

A quick tool for complex cases and dramatic changes

I like the Color Replacement brush better than other tools for a similar task. You can find out about it in the article « » , in which I turn the most ordinary girl into a red-haired Smurf woman with blue skin.

Finding a brush is not difficult, to do this you need to click right click mouse using a regular brush. Will open extra menu, in which you can select the desired tool.

I choose a color. Everything is as usual. Window on the right. In this case, black, and then I paint over part of the girl’s hair. Please note that all shades are preserved.

You can put green.

To change the brush size, use the keys.

I can also offer a training video on this topic.

Well, if you want to understand the program more professionally and understand exactly how this or that function works in the Photoshop program, then I offer a very useful course “ Photoshop for beginners in video format ».

Maximum useful information about tools. That's basically it. Don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date with the latest, useful and simple information.

See you again and good luck.

In Photoshop, it is very easy to recolor any object; to do this, it is enough to use the correction of color tone and saturation, but for coloring neutral colors - black and white, such manipulations will not be enough and there are some nuances. Let's take a closer look at this "problem".

Paint it black

Let's start with coloring black, everything will be very simple here! To color a black object in an image, you need to select the layer of this image in the layers panel, click on it once with the left mouse button and in the top menu of Photoshop select “Image” - “Correction” - “Hue/Saturation”, or simply press the Ctrl key combination + U. After of this action A window will open with hue and saturation settings, and in this window you need to check the “Toning” box, and then simply select the desired color using the sliders. If you do not check this box, you will not be able to change the tone of black.

It is important to “play” with the “Saturation” slider, choosing the most realistic look, and not just the color tone. This is the whole secret, many people simply don’t know, many people forget about this tick.

To paint an object with high quality, in this case a car, it is necessary to paint each of its elements separately, having previously selected it. To do this, take the “Pen” tool, draw around a part of the car, for example a bumper, then right-click and select “Select Area”. Next, click “Ok” in the pop-up window, and the feathering radius should be equal to zero.

After this, we proceed in the above manner: in the top menu, select “Image” - “Correction” - “Hue/Saturation”, check the box and adjust the required hue and saturation.

And such actions must be performed with all the necessary parts of the car: bumper, fenders, etc.

Paint it white

With white the situation is a little more complicated than with black, more complicated in the sense that to color it is not enough just to check a box, but requires a number of manipulations.

To begin with, as in the case of a car, we need to select the part of the object that we will repaint, namely the girl’s coat. To make a selection, it is better to use the Pen tool, as in the first case. For example and clarity, I have not highlighted all the coats, but only half. After this, you need to copy the selected area to a new layer; to do this, select the “Selection” tool in the left menu and right-click on the selected object. Next, in the tab that opens, select the “Copy to new layer” item and a new layer with the cut out fragment of the coat will appear in the layers panel.

After this, we need to create another copy of the layer with the cut out fragment. To do this, right-click on the layer with the fragment in the layers menu and select “Create a duplicate layer.” After this action, a copy of the layer with the fragment of the coat will appear in the layers panel.

Now select the fragment of the coat itself in the top layer, to do this, hold Ctrl and left-click on the top layer and you will immediately see that in workspace the fragment has become highlighted. The next step is to paint over this selection with the required color, you can do this simply with a brush, or with the Fill tool, it doesn’t matter. I painted it orange with the Paint Fill tool.

Only the required object needs to be painted; buttons and the hand do not need to be painted. After this, in the right layer menu, our layer with the colored fragment of the coat needs to select the “Chroma” overlay.

Now we make the top layer with the colored fragment an overlay of the bottom layer, to do this, hold down the Alt key, move the cursor between these layers until the icon (down arrow) appears and click with the left mouse button and the top layer becomes an overlay of the bottom one.

Then select the bottom layer with the unpainted fragment by left-clicking on it in the layers panel, and select the icon at the bottom to create an adjustment layer and select “Curves” from the menu that appears.

Namely about the team Replace color. This tool is located in the menu.

Let's look at the dialog box.

At the top Selection There is a tab from the “Color range”.

Using an eyedropper, a sample of the color that needs to be changed is marked on the picture sample. Pipette with plus adds an area pipette with minus- subtracts.

Setting the parameter Fuzziness.

Using the slider, you define the boundaries within which the color shades will change. With maximum variation, the replacement will include almost all shades of the selected color present in the image. With minimal scatter, only those pixels that exactly match the sample will be replaced.

New in Photoshop CS4 additional option Localized Color Clusters, designed to define areas of the same color. Its use allows you to more accurately highlight the color in the image.

In the lower part Replacement In the “Replace Color” dialog box, there is a tab from “Hue/Saturation”, with the help of which, based on the name, you select the color and shade to replace.

Let's look at color replacement using a specific example.

Step 1.

Open the image in Photoshop. We immediately create a duplicate of the main layer.

Step 2.

Step 3.

If you have CS4, then immediately put a tick opposite Localized Color Clusters. I increase the spread to maximum value. Using an eyedropper, mark an area on the image. Next, I choose the color I want to change to. I click on the colored square labeled “Result” and select the shade I need.

It can be seen that in the shadow area the color is not highlighted enough. I select the Eyedropper “+” and click on the image in the area of ​​the folds on the T-shirt.

The T-shirt was completely dyed, but at the same time, unnecessary areas, for example, the face, were dyed. I select the Eyedropper “-” and click it in the face area.

As you can see in the image itself, the lips and ears are still painted; this defect can be corrected with the help of an eraser.

Most successful this method Color changes work on contrasting images. Also in images where there are few related shades to the color being changed.

And finally, one more piece of advice. If the image still contains several areas of the same color, and only one of them needs to be changed, for example, then before using the command Replace color, you should highlight the area that requires color replacement. Any selection tool can help you with this.

I wish you success!
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