What's the easiest/best way to change dress colours?

[chrisatlemon]

hi all,

I'm working on an online store for flamenco products. We have wide range of dresses and shoes and it's almost impossible to get good quality photos for all of them.

My main concern is that I would like to present all different colour options in decent quality imagery.

I was thinking of taking the best image for each and simply photo shopping the colours. It doesn't have to be exact science, but to give the customer a good idea of how it may look.

Seeing that I will have to do a lot of colour options for a lot of dresses and shoes, what would you suggest the best way to do this?

Moderately quick, decent quality and adaptable to bulk photo shopping.

Basically meaning that I cannot put the care and detail I would if I just photo shopped a single image, I don't need high res pixel perfect quality. It should just look decent and I should be able to do it in a moderate amount of time.

Thanks for any tips

Chris

PS: it's been a long time, good to see you guys are still kicking!
PPS: Argh, I'm not allowed to post links! I guess the database was reset at some point doing my absence Well, I hope you get the idea without links to my store

 

[dv8_fx]

Welcome back, chrisatlemon. For starters, you can add a new layer on top of the dress, paint a color over the dress and set the layer mode to color and add a hue and saturation adjustment layer, it may work.

Off course it depends on the products original colors.....

 

[chrisatlemon]

Hey, thanks for the reply I will try that.

I attach a couple of sample images so you can get an idea of what I'm trying to achieve. These dresses usually have two colours, some pattern more complex others more simple. I guess I'll always have to use the selection tool to identify the different areas?

Cheers

Chris

 

[chrisatlemon]

and here's a couple of sample shoes, I guess these may be easier because they are mostly single coloured:

 

[MFSX]

I belive it's not so hard to make a selection with the pentool(that would surround the part the color of which you want to change ) and if neccessary add some feather (about 1 to 2px) then "Ctrl + U" for the "Hue/Saturation" window and there it should be easy for you to adjust the color.

A method that is a little harder is the following(it's not so effective, however , you can achieve great result with it esspecially if the selection of the element is very hard(too dificult for pentool) : use the eyedropper tool(hold Alt) click on the color you want to change then on the menue bar click: Select -> Color Range, make sure that "Sample color" is selected and than adjust the fuzziness so that besides the selected color everything is dark(if the selection preview is set on Black matte) then again the Hue/saturation for color change.
I hope i was helpfull

 

[SeniorS]

Yes, you will have to select are that you want to "paint" in one way or another for good quality. On shoos can try Selective Color and Hue/Saturation, but even with them best way is select. Magic Wand, Quick Mask, Color Range (if used with lasso can give good selection fast) anyway.
If your dress have only 2 colors then its pretty easy. Example which i choose, i selected red area (because it easier), with magic wand+lasso save that selection (appears in Layer pallete, then select all dress (which is easy with lasso) then just substract previous (red area) selection (holding CTRL+ALT click on Alpha1 channel) and result is selected "blue" area.
And do what dv8_fx said about layer with blending mode Color.
My comment would be not paint over it but use Solid Color from Layer Adjustment (with blending mode - Color of course). Do it with every "paint" needed area. At end you get something like this:


For more precise result select all those areas together by holding SHIFT+CTRL and click on each mask. Then make sure background is active layer and Hue/Saturation - Saturation -100 (or Desaturate). Then colors will be more like choosen one.

Using Solid Color gives one very important advantage, you can with one (okey two or tree) clicks change color which Solid Color use. It takes seconds. Can slide through color pallete and result is previewing. Custumer can sit beside and say "stop that color i want".

P.S. But its just on monitor. If you want close to 100% correct color then it will be hard. Every area will need additional adjustments (better with profesional who see actual fabric piece).

 

[Steve]

There are a a lot of ways to do it.

I think one of the easiest and quickest way for something like this is the "Magic Wand" tool.
Right now half the talent in this forum are saying "The Magic Wand tool"?

The pen tool is tedious but very exact the MW tool is sloppy but fast.
Select the color you want to change with the MW and from that selection create a mask.
Use Hue/Saturation, make sure it's clipped to the mask layer, and check colorize and use the sliders to change the color.

You'll see lots of places along the edges where the color isn't right because of the sloppy selection you got with MW.
Use the brush tool and either white or black on the mask to add to, or remove from the selection.

 

[MFSX]

That's with the second method and it's from the pink shoe. Although there is still plenty of pink, this satisfactory result is manageable in less than a minute




And this was made with: Color Range and pentool selection with variable feathers:

 

[MFSX]

Here is again my second method, it turned out to be quite effective in this image:

 

[chrisatlemon]

Thanks a lot guys!

While you were preparing these I also played around. Magic wand, layer masks, similar to what you suggest.

Indeed the magic wand is a little sloppy and i got some dirty fringes. I will try to follow both your suggestions closely and see what I can get to work quickly and reliable for a large amount of images.


Below some samples of the quickies I prepared.

Thanks again!

Chris

P.S.: horray, I can post my link now, here's the store I'm working on (work in progress, not too much to see bar the general theme and some test products)

http://flamencoymas.es/shop/index.php/
http://flamencoymas.es/shop/index.php/dresses/flamenco-dance-dresses.html