Replace Color Question – Photoshop CS

RR
Posted By
Robert_RWard
Nov 22, 2003
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2401
Replies
12
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Closed
There is probably a simple explanation, but . . .

I’m trying to use the Replace Color feature to replace the sky in a family photo. Thy sky is virtually white and I want to change it to a light blue. Regardless of the replacement color I choose, I wind up with various shades of grey in the actual photo – as if the color is being transformed into a monochrome color even though the color in the replacement box displays the color I chose.

I performed the same steps on other parts of the photo (other than the sky) and everything worked as expected – the colors are replaced with the color I chose. The sky problem persists however.

Can anyone offer a relative newbie a bit of advice? Thanks.

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Joanna_Lakey
Nov 22, 2003
A gradient works very well with skys. Select the sky with the tool of your choice. Then set the foreground and background colors to two similar shades of blue or even light blue and white. Now use the gradient tool (lenear works best)to add the gradient to your sky. Experiment with different colors to get the effect you want. Good luck!
D
davidjjmoore
Nov 22, 2003
I have found the same problem while trying to replace an irregular and discontiguous white area of a solarized photo with a red. No matter what shade is chosen, it always comes out grey when I confirm my selection.

I wonder whether the grey represents a layer or a mask or something? Is there something else I need to do to complete the process?
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 23, 2003
I have found the same problem while trying to replace an irregular and discontiguous white area of a solarized photo with a red. No matter what shade is chosen, it always comes out grey when I confirm my selection.

you might have better luck making a selection and useing a hue sat adjustment (in the layers palette) with the colorize checkbox checked.
JS
John_Slate
Nov 23, 2003
The replace color option alters the selected range of colors using the hue, saturation and lightness sliders, so in that sense the name of the option is misleading. You are not really replacing the color with another. That would be filling. Seeing as the selected color in this case is white, that would qualify as neutral, without any saturation. Without any saturation there is no hue, or hue has no meaning. So the only thing you can do with H S L sliders on a neutral is change the luminance which will yield some shade of gray. If you use curves or some other method to bump the selected area off the neutral axis, then the hue and saturation sliders will then have something to work with. Even the tiniest disparity in the R G and B values can be exploited by the H S L sliders. 254R/255G/255B can be turned into a light blue if you slide saturation to 100% and start to bring the lightness down.
DM
dave_milbut
Nov 23, 2003
and then there’s the colorize option for working on true black or white… 🙂
On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 04:36:57 -0800,
wrote:

There is probably a simple explanation, but . . .

I’m trying to use the Replace Color feature to replace the sky in a family photo. Thy sky is virtually white and I want to change it to a light blue. Regardless of the replacement color I choose, I wind up with various shades of grey in the actual photo – as if the color is being transformed into a monochrome color even though the color in the replacement box displays the color I chose.

I performed the same steps on other parts of the photo (other than the sky) and everything worked as expected – the colors are replaced with the color I chose. The sky problem persists however.

Can anyone offer a relative newbie a bit of advice? Thanks.

Select the sky and use either curves or levels, or use Image | Adjustments | Hue/Saturation on a layer mask, and check the colorize box.

Normal Hue/Saturation and Replace Color functions use HSL values, where chromacity is hue dependent, but color is saturation dependent. If saturation is zero (as in grey or neutral tones), then hue drops out of the equation. With the H value out of the picture (pardon the pun), tint cannot be added using the hue adjustment alone.

That’s where the layer mask comes in. If the sky has a variance in brightness, you want to preserve that, but still add color. Simply selecting "colorize" will place a flat color in the selected area, but if you put it on a layer, set the underlying layer mode to "Multiply", then play with the transparency settings, the variant brightness regions of the sky should be able to be preserved fairly well.

-john

~~~~~~~~
A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely
more than much knowledge that is idle. -Kahlil Gibran
~~~~~~~~
PA
Paul_Arking
Dec 18, 2003
I have the same exact complaint. The root of my complaint is directed at the heralding of this new tool as Photoshop’s long-awaited quick-tool for fixing red eyes. In fact, if you look at the help files for CS, you’ll see a step-by-step tutorial for removing red eyes using the color replacement tool.

Unfortunately, this tool is either buggy or else it is just not everything is was made out to be. When using it for this purpose (the purpose even indicated by the icon itself!), the red color in the pupils are replaced by a light grey — even when my replacement color is black and even when my mode is "color". I cannot figure out any way to get this tool to work as described in the tutorial.

I am sincerely hoping that someone at Adobe will be able to fix this and post a patch on the web site, as this can potentially be a really great tool if it worked as described.
JH
Jake_Hannam
Dec 18, 2003
"…red color in the pupils are replaced by a light grey."

I reported this awhile back but thought I was the only one having the problem. I’ve since gone back to the Channel Mixer method, tried and true, for red-eye.
PC
Philo_Calhoun
Dec 18, 2003
Red eye photos have multiple defects: flat lighting, sharp shadow below chin, out of focus pupil that is red/orange etc. The real fix is to retake the photo. Desaturating will indeed change a blurred orange-red blob to a blurred grey blob. Channel mix or calculations or apply image all work better. Even better is to repaint with a better highlight. In reality, there is no simple fix for these sort of images, as the defects are serious and multiple.
PA
Paul_Arking
Dec 19, 2003
You are mostly correct in that red-eye photos are often accompanied by other quality issues. However, one cannot simply say that retaking the photo is the answer because more often than not, that is just not possible.

One example of where this is very hard to do is with infants. Most infants’ pupils have a much slower reflex time than grown adults or even children and so their pupils almost never contract fast enough for a good photograph — even when a camera has red-eye reduction. Of course, using an off-camera flash would alleviate the problem, but many people that ask me for help with their photos don’t have that option. They might have sophisticated cameras capable of turning out otherwise great photos, but they are limited to the in-camera flash, which almost always results in red-eye with infants.

And so, getting back to the Color Replacement Tool thread… I have to say that this does not function at all in the manner in which they made it out. All the help files and tutorials describe it as some red-eye wondertool (again, even the icon itself indicates that)… when, in reality, the fact that it has no option to ignore luminosity renders it almost useless for red eyes. I sincerely hope that they add the option to work with it in this manner (perhaps a fifth mode? Hue, Saturation, Color, Luminosity, and Strict Color?).

In the meantime, I agree that desaturating is not the answer, as that, too, will render spooky grey pupils. What I’m doing until they get this tool right, is simply using the magic wand tool (with a tolerance of about 50-60 for stronger contrasts between pupil and iris and 30-40 for weaker contrasts between pupil and iris), then feathering the selection by 1 pixel, then pulling up the hue/saturation dialog box and reducing the lightness to 0 (of course, you can do this many ways, such as with Curves or Levels, but I find it easiest with the H/S box).

A couple of other points:

* When setting the tolerance for the magic wand — you want a tolerance that would cover all the red of the pupil and then the faint red "halo" around the pupil. Sometimes, if the pupil itself has different shades of red, you might have to add to the selection with a few more magic wand selections.

* When feathering the pupil selection by 1 pixel — I do that when the entire diameter of the pupil is less than 50 pixels. If the pupil is larger, I generally feather by about 1 pixel for every 50 pixels of pupil diameter.
MV
Mathias_Vejerslev
Dec 19, 2003
Paul,

See also the FAQ on reducing Red Eye, in particular answer 2. I use this method with a Channel Mixer Adjustment Layer for Red Eye. I have it actionized, so all I really have to do is dab the red eyes with a brush.

Mathias
MG
Miguel_Garcia
Dec 19, 2003
Change your mode to luminosity. Pick a color to replace the red. Set Sampling to just about anything. Limits to Contiguous and modify tolerance as needed. This should work for all color modes.

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