Lessons

Lesson Info

Match Colors Using Numbers

But you're going to find that there's three colors that human saturation simply cannot deal with. And those three colors are not colors at all because they could be pounding black and white photographs. And if a black and white photograph is not a color photograph than what's found within them, are not colors. Instead, their shades of gray that means white, black and gray. You cannot change using human saturation, because how did hue and saturation isolated color? It ended up, uh, isolated based on Hugh, which means basic color. And in that bar, at the bottom, you didn't see any blacks, any whites or any graze, and therefore it can't isolator change those things. Therefore, when I had this first image open, if this background happens to be perfectly gray and I'm not sure if it is, if there's some hint of color, it can change it. But if there's not then moving, he will change the color of everything in those bottles because their color but that background it won't be able to change unle...

ss you knew one thing. There's a colorized check box in. That'll add color to the image like takes all the color out and then forces color in, and that could do it. But that's mainly for colorizing black and white pictures. So out of these hats we could change the color of every single one of those hats. But the problem would be the color of this hat is very similar to the color of this hat, and I doubt I'd be able to isolate it precisely. I bet you the darker areas on this hat are so similar in color to the darker areas in this hat that it wouldn't be able to fully isolated. So that's why we use adjustment layers. And with adjustment layers, we can paint on a mask toe limit where things are changed. So here, if I go to hue and saturation and I click on the red hat and I see if it's good enough to be able to change its color, let's get a purplish hat, maybe a little less colorful. Here we go, and I just don't like that. The other hats changed while I grab my paintbrush tool. I paint with black, and as long as I used an adjustment layer, the adjustment layer will have a mask attached to it and you can come over here, and wherever you paint with black, you will prevent that change from happening. And so then, the only area where I need to be precise is where this little shelf comes up touches the hat, will get a harder edged brush, and you can click, hold, shift in, click somewhere else and get a straight line. Do that a few times, and now I've just made that hat shift colors without the others that are similar. Now there is some of the shadow on the right of it that's changing. So I just paint with black. I didn't want that to change, but the thing I will not be able to change in this image using hue and saturation is the white wall that's there, or the hats on the right upper right, because they don't have any color to them. They do have a slight hint of yellow, so I'd be able to get a slight hint of a change. But if I need to change that, then I need to switch to a warm, cool adjustment. I need to switch to curbs. So let me show you how to precisely match two colors I want to make the hats on the right side look like the green hat down here. Hue and saturation won't do it because the color white is not found in there to isolate things. Only if I turn on the couple rise check box, would I be able to do it. So what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna make a selection. First, let me throw away this current adjustment and I'll use the quick selection tool. And I'm just gonna come in here and paint across the hats in the hope of isolating them. We can always touch it up later. I'm gonna then come in here and do a curves adjustment layer. And this is where the info panel is going to be useful. The info panel gives me a precise description of the color that's underneath my mouse. So if I move my mouse onto what I'd like to match, I would like those hats to become this color. Well, with my mouse on top of those hats, I can look in the info panel and when I look up there, I see numbers for red, green and blue, and I could grab a pen which I happen to have in my hand here, and I can write down those numbers 1 1 and 76. I have just effectively written down the color that's under my mouse when you're in the info panel. If you see two sets of numbers divided by a slash, it means you're in the middle of adjusting a picture. You have an adjustment active and the numbers on the left or what you started with and the numbers on the right are the result of your adjustment. So if the area where your mouse has changed it all, you'd see before and after numbers. All right, well, now in curves, I want to adjust the a precise amount of red, green and blue that's in that hat. And I could do that by going over here to read. I could move my mouse on top of the part of the hat I want to change. And just like when I was in a separate lesson about tonal adjustments, I could click to have it out of dot for that color that the amount of red that's in there. But I could do the same thing with green. I could move my mouse up there and click, and I could do the same thing for Blue. But there's a way to get Photoshopped to do it to all three of those at the same time, and that's what I'm going to use its a trick. If you have that hand icon turned on and curbs, then here's the weird trick. You have to hold down two keys on your keyboard on a Macintosh. It's shifting command on Windows That would be shifting control. I'm holding them both down right now, and I'm going to click the mouse button. What did it just dio? All it did is it looked at the numbers that were in the info panel in it wrote him down. Then it went into curves and under read. It added a brand new dot. It's right there, and the number that shows up down here is the exact number that was in the Info panel. So it measured the amount of red and added a dot for it. When you go to green, you got the same thing we gotta dot It's the exact amount of green that was in the hat when you go to blue, then we got a dot for it. It's the exact amount of blue that's in the hat. Well, when you look at those numbers at the bottom there indicating talking about the little dot was just added and you have both input and output input means what did you start with? Output means, What are you gonna end with? Well, you remember when I had that other hat sitting there, The one I said I wanted to match? Ah, grab a pen And I wrote down some numbers. Well, I'm gonna type in the numbers in here wherever it says output, because that's what I'm gonna end up with right now. I am seeing red on the menu at the top, so I'm gonna type in the first number 1 Then I'm going to switch this menu to Green and down here, I'm gonna type in the second number, which was 1 Then I'm going to switch to blue and I'm gonna type in the third number I wrote down, which is 76. So therefore, the input numbers are how much red, green and blue. We used tohave in the hat in the output numbers are the amount of red, green and blue we got from the hat. We wanted to change their match. The only problem is is gonna look a little weird because you see the shape of these curves, how they have like a abrupt angle to them. So the result will look a little weird. But we'll have to fix that. When I zoom out, though, look at the hats on the right. The the stack of hats in the upper right. Those are the ones that were attempting to change in the area that I clicked on within. It did become the shade of green I desired. The only problem is the areas brighter than that in the areas darker than that. Look a little odd. And that's because the curve I just applied looks a little odd in the bright and dark areas right now, the areas that used to use as much blue as you possibly could use air still using that amount, even though the area just the tiniest bit darker than that is using a lot less. So all I got to do is adjust this corner little dot and bring it down close to the other one that's there, so it doesn't look like some odd shape. Instead, it looks like a nice, smooth shape. Here. Do the same thing over here to green. Grab the dot in the upper right. That's the DOT for White. Bring it straight down and tell that whole curve just looks like a normal nice little thing. And what we got left Fred, grab it. Stop! Bring it down, Ticketed a nice move shape Now if we zoom out, look at the hats. It's a little bit generic when it comes to highlights and shadows, but it's all green. We could always do a separate curves adjustment layer and try to brighten the highlights. Dark in the shadows. Everything like that or I can even come in here. And there's a pop up menu at the top of the Layers panel. It's known as the blending mode, and I could set it to a choice called Color, which might end up doing it. But the problem with color is that would end up not being able to change the brightness in those hats. If you think about how bright they were originally there almost white, that's not quite gonna work. But there are sometimes other choices that are in here that would things like multiplier darkened will often allow you to do that kind of thing. So in this case, I think multiplies a little bit better. So any time you need to precisely match one area to another, then you most likely want to use the numbers that are found in the info panel. You put your mouse on top of the area, you want to match your write down the numbers in the info panel. In essence, you're writing down the color that was found there, and then we can adjust the area until it matches. So I could use that here if I wanted the right side of the sky to match the left side of the Scott. So if you want to see that, I could first select the central portions, so I don't affect the, uh, building that's here. I could come in here and use curves. I can't use hue and saturation because I can't isolate black, white or gray in that area. On the right side of the sky is close to white, but I can with curves with curves I can move my mouse onto this area. Let's say it's right here. I want to get that to look like the other side. And there was a way to get it to add dots, all three curves. All it's gonna do is measure the amount of red, green and blue that's currently in there. And add Dodge the appropriate locations to indicate that amount. And that was by holding down shift in command and I click that just added dots on my curves, then to figure out what to adjusted to. I'm just gonna hover right over and here to say this is what I want to match right there. I look in my info panel and I see some numbers. I'm gonna write them down 1 71 and 40 I, in essence, wrote down the color that my mouse is under right now on, then, going to come in here to the three curves read it should already have a dot That was added that the moment I clicked within my picture and I'm just gonna type in an output number off one. You see how much bluer that side of the image became? I'm gonna then goto green. Get to it, cream. The number I have written down It's a second number of 71. Get a lot more blue over there on the side, isn't it? Then I go to blue. The number I have is 1 40 And sometimes it's not gonna be exactly what you expect. Well, okay. Here we ended up with Yes, that tiny little, brightest area ended up getting the right color, but the rest became black. Well, that's because look at this curve and going to the very bottom means no light whatsoever. And so you see how the majority of the curve went all the way to the bottom. So this is similar Any time you're working really close toe white were really close to black. You're gonna end up with an issue, which is you have a dot really close to the right edge of your screen. It's so grab the dot that's all the way to the right edge and just bring it down until it's no longer a radical shape. It's that it's just a nice, smooth line and do the same thing to the others. It's gonna be when you're really close to the ends that you need to do that now that when I already did, that means Red was probably left over. This one went all the way to the bottom. So let's see if it looks better when I bring it all the way to the bottom or not. Yeah, that's fine. But now I adjusted the entirety of that circle, and I only needed it on the right side. So now I'll grab my paintbrush tool. I'll paint with black, and I need a huge, soft edged brush. The larger your brushes, the softer the edge becomes. And wherever I paint with black, I'll remove the adjustment. So I'm just gonna remove it from over here. You can lower the opacity of your brush. Maybe I bring the opacity down toe No. 10 or 20% because there's, I think, a little bit less. I need right up here. Maybe a little bit less. I didn't hear, but I just made If I turn this off before, after I matched the other side, I could grab mine, uh, selection tool. Come in here and select these other areas that are in between these columns on the right side. Because I didn't think about them before. And then without a mask active, I'm just gonna fill those areas with the color that allows the math the adjustment to come through, which means filled with white, filled with white. All right, look what we just did. That's pretty cool, I think. But you have to get comfortable with curves and with curves. The main thing is the numbers are key. The numbers describe a color. If I want one area to match another area, I need the numbers to match. And then it's a matter of shoot. It affect your entire picture and not have to paint on the mask. So I'm not gonna do it here just because of limited time. But you see these guys that have been sitting out in the sun I caught these guys in Moscow there, hanging out. I could get rid of their sunburn. How would I do it? Well, you see, right here is non sunburned skin. Well, why not get the numbers that are in here to become the numbers that are over here and then you could mask it into the skin? In this particular case, though, there sunburn is a particular color so I could get away with using human saturation in. Therefore, I could most likely isolated and, uh, adjusted mean here. I'll just click on the image. Remember slamming those sliders together? We have the eye droppers, so click I bring saturation down just so I can see the range of isolated. Then grab the eyedropper. The plus sign If I need to expand and then these other areas, I'm not gonna quite call them sunburn here. It's kind of a fade out area, so I might spread the little side sliders. Remember the east, this means fade into. So just pull that out about like that, and it will fade into these others. But see if I can get all of the sunburn toe look black and white ish, then bring the saturation back up to the middle. And if I want to go from sunburned and non sunburn in here, how would I do it? Well, this was sunburn, and that's not it. Be moving to the right slightly. So I moved us to the right slightly. Go too far, and it's gonna become green then. Sunburn is darker than un sunburned skin, so you need to brighten it up a little. It might be a little bit more colorful or less. Turn this adjustment layer off before after, and if it's too much, lower the opacity or if there's a red car in the background, paint on the mask.