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Posted on 23/08/23 4:05:19 PM |
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DavidMac
Director of Photoshop Posts: 5296 Reply  |
COLORISING WHITES (AND BLACKS)
COLORISING WHITES (AND BLACKS) This is a very simple tutorial that I suspect most of you won't need because you probably know this technique already, but it's very quick to read and just maybe it will help you with a very simple problem that bothered and frustrated me for a long time. One adjustment I use frequently is the HSL Colorise option. However this has limitations when it comes to extremes of white or black. You cannot colorise a peak white or 100% black. Here's an extreme example using white which tends to be much more resistant to colouring than black, however exactly the same technique can be applied to blacks. I want to colour this lady's blouse blue. 
First step is to separate just her blouse to it’s own layer so you can colorise it without affecting the rest of the image. This is what happens when I use the HSL colorise. 
The shadow areas re-colour, but the closer the tones get to white the less they are affected, with peak white completely unaffected. Now its possible to play with the brightness and contrast and reduce the brilliance of whites to get an overall colour tint but this can quickly get drab and muddy and very unsatisfactory. This used to drive me crazy until I discovered this very simple method. Create a Solid Colour Fill layer above the image layer to be coloured and clip it to that layer. Set the layer mode to multiply. 
When you click OK a colour selection dialogue will appear. In this case I have selected blue. Now the blue is uniform across the blouse as it would be if the blouse were blue. 
Now it's playtime! ........ By adjusting the colour selection and the layer opacity you can get any degree of clean colouring from very subtle, to very saturated, to dark. 
This example uses white. If you want to re-colorise a pale colour then you may need to convert it’s layer to monochrome first. _________________ The subtlety and conviction of any Photoshop effect is invariably inversely proportional to the number of knobs on it ....... |
Posted on 25/08/23 07:37:13 AM |
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Steve Caplin
Administrator Posts: 6925 Reply  |
Re: COLORISING WHITES (AND BLACKS)
Yes. Good technique. |
Posted on 17/09/23 09:16:13 AM |
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Nick Curtain
Model Master Posts: 1768 Reply  |
Re: COLORISING WHITES (AND BLACKS)
Yes, I've used multiply to colour whites and then adjusted opacity to achieve the desired effect. Nick |