How To Use Photoshop Replace Color For Creative Editing.
Colors are an important aspect of any art, photography, or design. Sometimes you may feel that a certain color does not suit you, and you want to recolor it. You can easily do this in Photoshop without even erasing or recoloring anything by hand.
Photoshop has a Replace Color feature. This is a quick way to change colors when you feel you need to change something. It also only takes you a minute or so when you master it.
Here’s how to use the Color Swap feature in Photoshop.
How to use Replace Color
First, you must open the image of the color you want to replace. In this example, I will be using a palm tree design, which I want to make purple.
With the image open, go to Image> Adjustments> Replace Color. A window will appear where you can start using this function.
Click the part of the image where the color you want to replace is located. The selected color will appear in the box in the upper right corner labeled Color.
Now click on the box in the lower right corner that says Result. Here you can choose the color you want to change the original color too.
You can also change the hue, saturation, and brightness of a color. When the color suits you, click “OK”.
Now I want to change the color of the palm leaves to neon turquoise. So, I will use the same method as before, but this time I will choose leaves as my color.
However, with the blur level set, Photoshop did not collect all the greens from the leaves.
Fuzzy will add or remove parts of the color selection depending on the level at which it is set. The higher it is, the more shades it will acquire compared to your chosen color.
So I increased the value and now all the leaves are the desired color.
When to use the color replacement feature in Photoshop
There are times when using Change Color will be easier than others. In some cases, this is a great tool, but in others, it can make the image look messy and in such moments it is better to replace the color manually.
For example, this function works worse with real photos. Let’s say in this surfer image you want to change the color of his suit to make it look more green.
Well, there are already a lot of dark blue/black shades in this photo, so Replace Color will also change those shades in the places you don’t need.
Even decreasing the level of fuzziness will still change some colors that you might not want to change. The best time to use Replace Color is when you have very solid colors, such as in graphic design or illustration.
However, you can still get some cool effects with color replacements in real photographs, so if you want more stylized editing, don’t rule out its potential entirely. The downside is that you don’t have full control over how colors are applied to a photo, so the effect can be random.
Another option, if you want more control over the color replacement, is to use another feature called the color replacement tool.
Use the Color Replace Tool
It’s a completely different tool than Color Swap and you can find it under the Brush tool by right-clicking it.
With this tool, you can replace any color with a brush. The color you replace the original colors with will be your foreground color, which you see at the bottom of the toolbar. You can click this color to change it if you like.
You will also see a crosshair in the center of the brush cursor. This is how Photoshop knows what color you want to replace. Therefore, make sure you only keep the crosshair in the color you are replacing. If you move it to a different color, Photoshop will register that color as the one you want to replace.
However, you don’t need to worry about the size of the brush as it only paints the color that the crosshair registers. If you want Photoshop to register color only once, rather than all the time, you can select the Sample: Once an icon in the options bar, which looks like an eyedropper with a cross at the end.
Again, just like the Fuzzy setting in Replace Color, you can change the Tolerance setting for Photoshop to allow for a wider range of hues to change depending on the registered color.
If you want a more accurate color replacement, this is the best tool as it gives you complete control over which color is changed.
Tips for using the color replacement feature in Photoshop
There are some aspects of this tool that can be confusing at first. For example, it does not work with completely black or white shades. Photoshop does not consider them to be valid “colors”, so you cannot replace non-colors.
There are ways to change black to something else, but there are many workarounds that don’t use color swap. Therefore, when using this feature, make sure you are replacing with real color, not just black or white.
Also keep in mind that going from dark to light can make the image a little unnatural, especially if you are editing a real photo. This can make your image look washed out because Photoshop tries to adjust a darker color to make it look brighter.