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Photoshop CS3  |  Go to CS4 Help

Replace color in image areas

The Color Replacement tool simplifies replacing specific colors in your image. You can paint over a targeted color with a corrective color. The Color Replacement tool doesn’t work in images in Bitmap, Indexed, or Multichannel color modes.

  1. Select the Color Replacement tool .
  2. Choose a brush tip in the options bar. Generally, you should keep the blending mode set to Color.
  3. For the Sampling option, choose one of the following:
    Continuous
    Samples colors continuously as you drag.

    Once
    Replaces the targeted color only in areas containing the color that you first click

    Background Swatch
    Replaces only areas containing the current background color.

  4. For the Limits option, select one of the following:
    Discontiguous
    Replaces the sampled color wherever it occurs under the pointer.

    Contiguous
    Replaces colors that are contiguous with the color immediately under the pointer

    Find Edges
    Replaces connected areas containing the sampled color while better preserving the sharpness of shape edges.

  5. For tolerance, enter a percentage value (ranging from 0 to 255) or drag the slider. Choose a low percentage to replace colors very similar to the pixel you click, or raise the percentage to replace a broader range of colors.
  6. To define a smooth edge in the corrected areas, select Anti-aliased.
  7. Choose a foreground color to replace the unwanted color.
  8. Click the color you want to replace in the image.
  9. Drag in the image to replace the targeted color.



Comments

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Comments


DickTR said on May 21, 2007 at 11:47 AM :
The"replace color" option lets you modify an existing colour, not change it to a different colour.

How do you turn a red car blue?

In CS I easily turned a blue sky white to extract a red helicopter to put it on a different background.

No I have a burned out white sky which I want to turn blue... should this be difficult?
EttaMae1 said on Mar 20, 2008 at 1:12 PM :
Why can't I figure this out? I have an RGB image of a T-Shirt in Lavender on a white background. I want to change the T-Shirt to Black. All I can get are gray colors for black - I can get every other color at 100%.
No screen name said on Apr 23, 2008 at 11:05 AM :
Creating a Frame Using Color Replacement. I think I have this until the last step. I have color replacement tool selected, I have the right color in the set background color place on the toolbar. How do I drag the color into the selected area?
No screen name said on May 6, 2008 at 5:16 PM :
Like the the previous commenters, Step 9 makes no sense to me:
"Drag in the image to replace the targeted color." ?????????????

This is just bad technical writing. The documentation team doing needs to clarify this.
No screen name said on Jun 12, 2008 at 7:42 AM :
The general idea seems like it should be simple. Pick a color that is will be the change-to color. Pick a color that is the change-from color. Then move the brush over the image, causing the change-from color to become the change-to color. Too bad it doesn't work like that.

How is step 7 done? How to set the change-to color? Is this done as the first click in the image after selecting the Color Replacement tool, or is it done by working with the color selection dialog and setting the foreground value to the change-to color.

How is step 8 done? How to set the change-from color. Is it the second click, which is what the current directions seem to say? I can't get it to work as first or second click. It seems to select a color that will be replaced without me making any choice.

How does one start over?

My attempts are now stuck with a choice of change-from color that I cannot change. Did I make this choice the first time I tried and made a mistake? How do I get it to stop using the change-from color it has bound to, and start over with new change-from color?

I can change the foreground color with the color picker, and that will become the change-to color. But I cannot change the change-from color from whatever value it has now. I don't know how it got that color, and it doesn't seem to be changeable.
Calvin K said on Jul 30, 2008 at 9:50 AM :
with some playing around I think I got the gist of it to clear the confusion.

Firstly, the Color Replacement brush has a cross hair in the center that samples colour to "change from" or the "targeted colour" (normal brush do not). Whenever you left click, the brush samples the colour the cross hair is on, unlike healing tool you do not press alt to pick a targeted colour.

"Continuous" will sample colour as you paint. Whatever is under the cross hair as you paint becomes the new "change from" colour. If not careful the brush will just paint over everything since every time the cross hair encounters a new colour that colour becomes the new "change from" colour.

"Once" only targets the colour the cross hair is on when you start painting; the "click" samples once, the "drag" paints without further sampling.

"Background Swatch" targets the background colour.

Note that the cross hair samples the colour, while the entire brush paints.


To replace black and white parts with colours, it might be helpful to first make them more gray by using "Luminosity" instead of "Color" in the blending mode (with the desire colour picked as the foreground), then paint over the same area again using "Color" mode. "Color" mode does nothing to pure white and black, since white and black are not colours but level of luminosity.

Hope this helps.
landorasue said on Aug 7, 2008 at 3:46 PM :
I, too, cannot get the Color Replacement Tool to work properly. For example, I have the same image ( brown ribbon) on five different layers. I want to give each ribbon a different color. I got the color to change on two of the ribbons, but for the life of me, cannot get the other three ribbons to change to the color I want them.

I totally do not understand this tool, and cannot seem to get any clearn instructions on how to use this tool.
7439IwinSP said on Aug 12, 2008 at 12:04 PM :
Color me similarly confused. I am trying to replace rust on stainiless steel with, well, stainless steel gray, and the tool insists on making blue. Cannot figure out how to set / control the replacement color.
DickTR said on Aug 13, 2008 at 12:29 PM :
It seems fairly obvious that this is a bug, and I have reported it as such, refering them to this page for details.

 

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