[TUTORIAL] Altering Colors

Now that you understand some of the basics of Pixlr Editor (or Photoshop), let's move on to the second installation in this short series of tutorials: changing the colors of an item or background.

This post will be divided into two parts as different methods will be exemplified specifically to the program used; the first half will use Pixlr Editor and the second half is exclusive to Photoshop. (Search for "Photoshop Method" if you want to skip to that section.)

Pixlr Editor Method

I will preface this with a warning that recoloring items on Pixlr Editor can be very tedious and time consuming. Sadly, I've come to discover that there aren't many shortcuts around this and it's one of many limitations of this program. (You'll understand what I mean by this if you read the Photoshop section as well.)

To work on a particular part of an image, you'll want to use the polygonal lasso tool or the marquee tool. This allows you to manually trace around the object that you wish to edit. It's highly recommended that you zoom in so you'll be able to precisely select around the object. If you want to add more to your selection path, hold down the shift key and a small plus sign will appear next to your cursor. Likewise, if you've made a mistake, press the ctrl button to remove part of your selection.

As shown in the example above, I decided to change the colors of the bean bag chair, bed and curtains, but keep the original colors for all other objects. This is where the add to selection path feature comes in handy.

Next, go to adjustment > hue/saturation and drag around the bars until you get your desired color.

I suggest you leave the lightness setting alone, and increase the saturation if you want the colors to be bolder or decrease it if you don't want it to stand out as much. You may want to take note of the numbers for the hue/saturation changes made if you intend to change the colors for the night version of your chosen background.

You can stop here and save your work if you're happy with the results. However, I wasn't satisfied with the color of the wall and the window sill.

After the first round of changing the coloring of an object, you'll want to deselect the selection path (ctrl + d or edit > deselect all). Otherwise, the colors of those parts will be modified again when you readjust other areas of the image.

As you've probably guessed by now, you use hue/saturation to change the colors and select the areas you wish to change with the help of the polygonal lasso tool and/or marquee tool.

Here is my final result! Similarly, if you'd like the objects in the night version to compliment with the day version, you'll have to open it up and repeat the same steps again. (Hence why I mentioned you may want to jot down the hue/saturation numbers in order to obtain the same shade in the night version.)

Photoshop Method

There's not a lot to be explained for the Photoshop method. The same technique mentioned above can also be applied on Photoshop, but this software offers much more efficiency when involving selection path.

My personal preference for altering colors is the photo filter feature. You can use hue/saturation as well, but I find that it can look very grainy for more complex, well-detailed backgrounds if you increase hue towards its maximum or minimum. If you can't find this option, try looking under image > adjustments.

As indicated above, a new layer will be created upon selecting an image color adjustment option, which will be extremely useful in the following steps. Don't forget to change the density percentage to adjust the intensity of the color. (I set mine to 100% in this example.)

Suppose you also want the bed in the night version of this background to correspond with the day version. On Photoshop, this procedure only involves a few clicks and takes less than thirty seconds to complete.

Start by opening up the other image and use the move tool to drag it into the working window.

All you have to do next is duplicate the photo filter layer (ctrl + J or right click and select "duplicate layer") and drag it above the night background layer in order to replicate the same color effect.

If the result is too bright and bold for your own liking, this can easily be fixed by reselecting the item by holding down ctrl and clicking on the layer mask thumbnail.

And go to hue/saturation to turn down the saturation.

Earlier in this post, I stated that you should not mess with the lightness setting found under hue/saturation. Depending on how you adjust the levels under this option, it can completely drown out the details of the background. If you want to make an object brighter or darker while retaining as much detail as possible, I would recommend the brightness/contrast tool instead.

The procedure is rather easy and straightforward, but Pixlr Editor does have its disadvantages. It would be beneficial if the program automatically created a new layer when changing the color of an item. This would be advantageous if you wanted to mass produce the same background but in several different colors. Or to make the night version match without the hassle of reselecting around all the objects. Unfortunately, the lack of such feature is a huge setback for this program and can make this portion of editing very tiresome.

This concludes the tutorial on changing colors of a specific area of a background. Hope this contained some helpful tips for you. See you in the next post!