In this video, I'm going to show you how to
change the color of anything in Photoshop. Hi, welcome back to the Photoshop Training
Channel I'm Jesus Ramirez
In this video, I'm going to show you four different examples of how to change the color
or replace the color of anything in Photoshop. We're going to start with a basic example,
but then we're going to move on to advanced techniques that will help you in those difficult
projects At the very end, I have a really cool Blend
If trick that I think you're going to enjoy It allows you to convert a Blend If transparency
into a Layer Mask. Okay, let's get started
We're going to work with this document that contains a single layer
Now before we do anything else, I want to show you two things really quick
I just want to get them out of the way Number one is a couple terms that I want you
to understand I don't know if you know them or not, but
I want to make sure that we're all on the same page
So, I'm going to double click on the foreground color picker, and I'm going to talk about
hue, saturation, and brightness And really, that's what this video's all about,
changing the hue, saturation, and brightness of colors to make them into different colors. So, what is Hue? Hue is this slider here that basically allows
you to select a color It is measured in degrees from zero to 360
Once it gets to 360, it goes back to zero, meaning it's red again
So, that's hue And you can click on that input box and use
the up and down arrow keys to change it, hold shift and the up and down arrow keys, and
it increases in increments of 10. Then we have saturation
So, let me select the color here Saturation, notice that it's at 100, but if
I use the down arrow key, you'll notice that the saturation decreases and that circle moves
over to the left So, this is a visual representation of what
saturation is. Then we have brightness, and I think that's
the easiest one to understand If we go up, the color becomes brighter
If we go down, the color becomes darker So, I think that's pretty easy to understand
So, I just want to make sure that we all understand what I mean by hue, saturation, and brightness. Okay
I'm going to cancel this, and I'm going to talk about one other thing
Nested under the brush tool, you'll find the color replacement tool
Now this is a tool that I don't necessarily use too often, but I'm pretty sure that somebody
will ask about it in the comments, So, I'm sort of answering that question now before
it comes up And the color replacement tool allows you
to select a foreground color, So, we'll select blue, and then paint over the area that we
want to replace And it actually does a really good job
Notice that I'm not being very precise Photoshop is finding the edges for me as it's
replacing that red color with this blue color. The problem with this tool is that you're
working destructively, which means that you're destroying the original pixels
Also, it doesn't give you lot of control to adjust this tool
As you can see, you just paint over the original pixels, and that's it
So, that's the reason why I don't like the color replacement tool
But feel free to use it if it works for your needs. What I'm going to do in this tutorial is show
you examples that are more flexible, and that should work for a lot of different situations. So, we're going to start with the basic example
first And the first thing that you should do is
click on the Quick Selection tool. Make a selection around the object whose color
you want to change, in this case this red shirt. And I don't have to be very precise because
I'm going to be working with adjustment layers, and you can always come back and edit them
if you need to So, with this selection active, I'm simply
going to go into the new adjustment layer icon and select hue and saturation
This is going to create a hue and saturation adjustment layer, which controls those three
things that we just talked about a moment ago: hue, saturation, and brightness. And I can edit this Hue and Saturation Adjustment
Layer to change the color of the shirt I can simply click and drag the hue slider
left or right to change the hue I can also adjust the saturation and lightness
of this color. So, once you make your adjustments, you may
need to come back and edit your mask So, I'm going to zoom in and notice how the
mask was not perfect I can click on the layer mask, and then paint
with the brush tool using white to reveal the effect or paint with black to conceal
the effect And I'm not going to spend a whole bunch of
time fine tuning the selection because it's not really important to the tutorial
But just realize that in your images, you will need to fine tune the selections. I'm going to double click on the hand tool
to see the entire image Now I'm going to show you another way in which
you can change the color, and that is by either creating a solid color adjustment layer, blue
is okay for this example, or create a new layer and paint with the brush tool
In this case, we're just going to use the solid color adjustment layer, but it would
be the same thing if I were actually painting on a layer. So, I'm going to apply the hue saturation
adjustment layer mask to this layer, just to save a little time
So, I'm going to hold Alt, Option on the Mac, click and drag that layer mask and drop it
in there Photoshop is going to ask me if I want to
replace it Yes, I do. And there it is. Now you can use two blending modes to change
the color of something You can use hue or color
The difference is that the hue blending mode only changes the hue of the image, not the
luminance, and not the saturation Color changes both the hue and saturation
In most cases, I prefer to use color, because you can always come in here and adjust the
saturation if need by dragging left or right And then, of course, you can change the color
if you want to And you can press OK. Now how do we make a white or black shirt? To do so, you can simply create a hue and
saturation adjustment layer, and reduce the saturation
And we want to apply the same layer mask But we're actually going to do something else
We're actually going to create a group and apply the layer mask onto that group, and
then I can put the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer in there
And we're going to apply the layer mask into the group. So, that one layer mask can control the different
adjustment layers that are going to be in there. Because to get a realistic white or black
shirt effect, we're going to need more than one adjustment layer. So, we have this group that contains the hue
and saturation adjustment layer, and I'm just going to delete that layer mask So, you can
see that we're really not using it So, I brought the saturation all the way down
Then I can create a levels adjustment layer And once again, we don't need that layer mask
You don't need to delete the layer mask, but I'm doing it So, that it's clear that the
grouped layer mask is controlling the visibility of all the layers. So, we have this levels adjustment layer,
and we can then control the black and white points
If I click and drag the black point to the right, I can make a black shirt, and then
drag this center point to control the contrast of the shirt
Or I can click and drag the white point to the left, and then control the center point
to adjust the contrast of the white shirt. Now you will have to do some fine tuning on
the mask, but that is very simple All you need to do is go into the group layer
mask, select it, make sure that the focus, the white outline, is around the layer mask
thumbnail, and then paint with white to reveal that effect. And again, I'm not going to spend time fine
tuning the layer mask, but you get the idea I'm going to double click on the hand tool,
and this is how the white shirt looks. What I'm going to do now is merge down into
a single layer So, I'm going to press Control E, Command
E on the Mac, just to collapse it all into one layer
So, now we have a white shirt. So how do we make a white shirt into a red
or blue shirt? What you need to do is use a color fill adjustment
layer, and let me show you why If you simply use the hue and saturation adjustment
layer, and you try to change the hue or saturation, nothing will happen in terms of adding color
Of course, the shirt can become black, but I really can't add any color
You can click on Colorize, and then try to fine tune it to get a color
But I think that it's easier to use a color fil adjustment layer
So, it's up to you what you use, but just So, you can see a different technique, we
have this color fill adjustment layer. And changing the blending mode to color or
hue really won't give you the result that you want
However, if we change the blending mode to multiply, we apply the color and the luminance
of that layer onto the white shirt So, now we can just select a different color
for the shirt So, that's another technique that you can
use to color a shirt One thing I want to mention is that if the
shirt is a dark color, then you will want to use Screen instead of Multiply. Now we're going to work on a different example
that will be a little more complicated, but I think that you can follow along
So, I'm going to work with this file here of this woman wearing a plaid shirt
And if we wanted to change the red stripes on her plaid to a different color, it would
be too difficult to simply select the quick selection tool and just select those specific
reds It would take way too long, and you probably
wouldn't be able to get a good selection. So, a technique that I recommend using is
creating the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer and taking advantage of the direct selection
tool, which is this one here You can click on that
And then you can click on the color that you want to change, and use the hue slider to
change it And then you can, of course, use saturation
and lightness. Now here's a little trick for you
I'm going to reset the adjustment layer, and I'm going to hold Control, that's Command
on the Mac, and click And notice how I'm changing the hue of that
color I selected? If I just click and drag without holding any
keys, I change the saturation of the color that I clicked on. Also, I want you to notice one thing
I'm going to reset the adjustment layer Notice how the label reads Master, but if
I click, it selects the reds If I click on the drop down, you'll see that
we have reds, yellows, greens, cyans, blues, and magentas
So, this picker allows us to select the color, and it automatically selects it from the drop
down And also notice the bottom part of the properties
panel We have these two points that tell us that
the color that we selected is in between there and that those colors will be changed when
we adjust any one of these sliders. And then we have the two end points, which
simply means that between the end point and this center point, we're going to have a gradual
transition of colors, So, it won't be a complete transition
So, that's what that means here So, notice that if I select her lips, it'll
select reds, and obviously clicking on here, it also selects reds
And by the way, we can adjust this, and I'll show you how in a moment. I'm going to click on the red part of the
plaid shirt while holding Control, Command on the Mac, and then drag to change this to
blue Then I'm going to zoom in, and you'll see
that we didn't quite select all the colors, but we can click and drag these points to
add to the selection So, now we selected more of those colors. I'm going to fit the image to screen, So,
we can see it all And obviously, the final step is just to isolate
that adjustment to the shirt I'm not going to spend much time making the
selection It's the same step that we did before
You can use the quick selection tool like we did in the previous example, but in this
case, I want to save a little bit of time So, we're going to use a pre-made selection
that I made off camera So, I'm going to load that selection by holding
Control, Command on the Mac, and just applying it to that adjustment layer
So, there it is And you can of course always come back and
make adjustments to that color if need be. One thing that I want to point out is that
if you hover over this icon, you can see the keyboard shortcuts
Click and drag to modify saturation, and Control click to modify hue
That's Command on the Mac. For the next example, I'm going to show you
how you can target a specific color, make it into a selection, and then change this
color in case you need a layer mask to contain that color
So, I know it sounds a little confusing, but let me show you what I mean. We're going to work with this document
And if we wanted to change the color of this back here in the back but nothing else, then
using the quick selection tool for that job wouldn't give us the best result
There is a lot of detail that we want to preserve So, one of the best things that you can do
is use the color itself to make the selection And you can do So, by going into Select, Color
Range And if you select Image, you will see the
image itself in the preview window Or you can click on Selection. Then you can just click on the color that
you want to select and click on this eyedropper with the plus sign to add colors to that selection
But as you noticed, it's selecting different areas of the image, and I don't want that
I only want to select this bag So, I'm going to cancel, and I'm going to
simply freehand a selection using the lasso tool
So, I'm going to click around that light, and just hover over the areas that contain
the color that I want to select So, I'm pre-defining a selection. Then I'm going to go back into Select, Color
Range Now notice the preview
It only contains that area And don't worry, the light won't be selected
So, at this point, I can just set my target color, move over into the selection view,
and then just add to my selection So, I'm clicking and dragging to add all those
oranges to my selection You can adjust the fuzziness lighter, which
expands or contracts the selection, and then press OK
And notice how Photoshop only selected the oranges of this bag. Then I can create a group and apply a layer
mask based on that selection Then I can create adjustment layers inside
of that group Hue and saturation is inside of that group
So, if I move the hue slider, I will change the color only of that bag
And this becomes really useful now because we can start loading adjustment layers inside
of that group, and it will only affect the areas that we selected
So, we can even apply a texture, for example So, I can go into the pattern fill, select
this pattern, press OK, change the blending mode to soft light, and maybe reduce the opacity
So, now that bag has a different color and a pattern
And of course, I can adjust the color of that bag if need be. For the next example, I want to show you how
to change the color of objects that are difficult to select
So, we're going to use this image of this tree
And what we're going to do is try to change the leaves to a different color
So, maybe you want to give this tree red leaves because you're working on some sort of alien
planet composite or something like that But the point is that we want to select the
leaves So, how do you select them? I'm going to show you a really cool trick
using Blend If that I'm really sure you're going to like
So, I want to start by duplicating the layer Then I'm going to hide the bottom layer
And I'm going to double click to the side of the layer to bring up the layer style [inaudible
00:15:39] And I'm going to use the Blend Ifs lighters. Now if you don't know what Blend If is, don't
worry I have an eight-minute crash course here on
YouTube that you can watch for free I'll post the link to it down below in the
description But basically, these sliders allow you to
hide pixels based on their luminosity So, notice that if I drag the black point
to the right, I hide the dark pixels If I drag the white point to the left, I hide
the bright pixels Also, if I hold down the Alt or Option key,
you will notice how the point splits, and I can create a smooth transition
So, that is basically how it works. I also have different channels
So, I can go into the blue channel, for example, and I can take out the blue in this image,
in this case the sky So, I'm building the selection with these
sliders I'm also going to hold Alt, Option on the
Mac, and split those in half and create a smoother transition
Then press OK. Unfortunately, these are not transparent pixels
If I hold Control, Command on the Mac, and click to load the active pixels, it's going
to load the entire layer Because I'm only hiding those pixels based
on their luminance values But I can actually convert this into transparency
by right clicking on the layer and selecting Convert to Smart Object. Look at the layer thumbnail now
Do you see the transparency? I can hold Control, Command on the Mac, and
click on that layer thumbnail once again, and this time Photoshop actually loads transparency
as a selection So, I can hide this layer, come back to my
tree layer, and create a hue and saturation adjustment layer, and Photoshop automatically
applies that selection as a layer mask. By the way, I'm curious to know if you knew
that Blend If trick or not Let me know in the comments. But anyway, you can use a hue slider to control
the colors of the selected areas and use a rectangular marquee tool while holding Shift
to add to the selection Holding Shift adds to the selection, and holding
Alt subtracts from the selection So, remember, Shift and Alt
Add and subtract So, I'm adding to the selection in areas that
I don't want to apply the effect to With the selection active, I can come into
the layer mask thumbnail, make sure that you see the focus, the white outline around the
layer mask, and fill with black Black is currently my background color
So, I can hold Control Backspace, Command Delete on the Mac, to fill with black to hide
the effect of that adjustment layer. Now, I want to remove the effect from the
branches and the bark of the tree So, what I can do is duplicate my tree layer,
Control J, Command J on the Mac, drag it on top of the hue and saturation adjustment layer,
and then we can use the technique that we used in the previous example to select only
brown from the image So, I'm going to go into Select, Color Range
You can then click on Image to make sure that you are able to see the tree and click to
select that point And you can also click and drag to add to
that selection If you go into the selection view, you will
see that we selected pretty much all the branches and all the parts that we want to keep
Then press OK, and click on the layer mask icon to create a layer mask that targets only
the brown parts of the tree And the Hue and Saturation Adjustment Layer
is only controlling the colors of the leaves. The point of this example is for you to realize
that you can stack multiple layers on top of each other, and multiple adjustment layers
to get the results that you need You're not stuck with just one layer and one
adjustment layer You can do as many things as you want. Everything looks pretty good, and you can
go in there and fine tune the mask if you need to. Let me know in the comments which of these
techniques were new to you Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop
Training Channel, don't forget to click on that subscribe and notification buttons
Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you again in the next tutorial.
