Colour Replace

[Tomas Sutas]

Hi,

I need some help. I want all particular colour in my image (lets say white) to be replaced to another colour (not standard so I cant select it from colour panel) that I would like to select from the same image / layer with an eyedropper tool (lets say its another shade of white). Is this possible or is eyedropper + paint bucket way my only option?

Many Thanks,

Tomas Sutas

 

[Tomas Sutas]

Just to add - I want all of the colour in the image / layer to be replaced. So all white to disappear and be replaced by another shade of white that I select from the same image with an eyedropper tool.

 

[Tom Mann]

It's possible to do, but in many cases you will have problems around the edges of that color. Please post an example image so we can see what you are working with.

Tom

 

[Tomas Sutas]

Hi Tom,

Please see an example. If it was a more simple image I would just use eyedropper and paint bucket to fill the white spaces with the colour of the t-shirt, but replace would be perfect if it worked!

 

[Tom Mann]

There are many ways one could do this. Probably the easiest is to select the white areas using the color range tool, and then flood those areas using the paint bucket. See attached image.

The only problem with this is that there is a slight difference in the blues near the top of the image vs near the bottom of the image, so this shows up if you flood it with only one color, which is what I did. A bit more sophisticated approach would be to sample both areas and fill the whites with the resulting slight gradient.

BTW, I thought the sketch of the man was too light for this application, so I darkened it (using levels) before filling the white areas.

T

 

[Tom Mann]

A way to refine the result of the above approach is to introduce some variation in the white areas.

With the whites still selected, use the clone / stamp tool at low opacity (normal blending mode) to paint blues from nearby areas into the white areas. This works quite nicely - see attached.

HTH,

Tom

 

[Tom Mann]

BTW, I'm not a fan of the "replace color" tool. It essentially does two functions, selection and replacement, in one step. For the highest quality results, I want these functions to be done separately, with each separately under my control.

Specifically, the first step in the color replacement tool is a watered-down version of the color range tool. I want the full set of options the latter gives me.

In addition, the 2nd step in the color replacement tool is a watered-down version of the hue/saturation adjustment tool. It doesn't provide the "colorize" option of the latter, and even if it did, I might want to use a completely different method to introduce color (eg, as described above).

T

 

[Tomas Sutas]

Wow this looks great! Thanks for advice!

 

[Tom Mann]

I'm glad to have helped.

BTW, there is also a thank you button hidden at the extreme lower left-hand corner of each post.

Cheers,

Tom