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 Remember, the comments is the only way that
I can get feedback from the videos that you watch, so I really would appreciate your thoughts
on this technique And, of course, if this is your first time
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a new tutorial Thank you so much for watching, and I will
talk to you again in the next video.
