Today, I'll be showing you a really simple way to change the color of an object using photoshop.

We'll be recoloring a smiley by Conor, which can be found here.

We're going to be using a Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer. It sounds like a mouthful, but it's really easy!

The Hue/Saturation tool is a powerful instrument that allows you to recolor objects easily and effortlessly. We're going to use it alongside an adjustment layer to "link" the hue layer with the original image.

1. Go to Layer > New Adjustment layer > Hue/Saturation


2. You should see a dialogue box similar to this:

Make sure that "Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask" is checked

Go ahead and click "OK"

3. Now you should see one of these two windows:

or

No matter which it is, check "Colorize" and then drag the Hue arrow to whatever color you want the image to be. When you're satisfied with your recolor, click "OK" if needed.
I'm making my smiley green, so my adjustments look like this:


4. You might notice some imperfections with your image - in our case, the tongue of our smiley turned green. We don't want this! If you need to make some color corrections, read the rest of step four. Otherwise skip ahead.


4.2) Zoom in using the zoom tool or by pressing control/command + "+" (the plus key on your keyboard) until you can clearly see the area you don't want to be colored.

4.3) Disable the Hue/Saturation layer by unchecking its visibility icon in the layers palette.




4.4) Use the one of the Marquee Tools (I'm using the Rectangular Marquee Tool ) to select the pixels you don't want colored.

4.5) After you've selected all the pixels you need, re-enable the Hue/Saturation layer by re-checking its visibility icon in the layers palette. When this is done, simply hit delete on your keyboard. If all goes well, you should have removed the pixels that you don't want colored. If not, make sure that your Hue/Saturation layer was the active layer (currently selected in the layers palette).



5) Save and you're done! If all went well, your smiley should now look something like this:



See, like i said - an easy, effortless (or near effortless) way to recolor objects!

Hope you enjoyed


Last Edit: Oct 24, 2009 20:51:12 GMT by Benjamin