Photoshop: Replace Color

Earlier, we covered using 'Match Color...' to recolor a research image to represent a palette concept. A useful compliment to this tool is the 'Replace Color...' tool which we'll demonstrate here to recolor only a specific color in an image.

Here's the image we'll be working with:

In this image we're looking to replace the greenish color of the vessel with a more blue tone. After opening the image in Photoshop, we'll start the 'Replace Color...' command (Image->Adjustments->Replace Color...). The first thing you'll notice in this dialog is the selection preview in the middle of the dialog. This preview describes which portions of the image will be affected by the command -- white areas will be affected, while black areas will remain unchanged. By default, the eyedropper tool is selected in the upper corner of the dialog. Clicking on the green color in the image modifies the selection area to include only the green areas of the image. Using the eyedropper tool with the plus (+) icon lets us add colors to the selection set, while the eyedropper tool with the minus (-) icon will subtract colors from the selection set. The fuzziness slider controls the tolerance of the selection set to include colors similar to the selected colors.

Once we get the selection preview roughly selecting only the area we want to change (we're not going to be overly detailed here, as we're using this command as a visualization tool rather than for final output), we'll click on the target color swatch to pop-up the color picker. This color picker functions just like any other Photoshop color picker -- we can either choose a color directly, or if we want to match a color already in the image, clicking in the image functions just like the eyedropper tool.

Once we're satisfied with the replacement color we've chosen, we'll click OK to produce the final result.

Looking at this image, you can see that some colors were replaced in areas that we didn't particularly want to replace (top right corner). If we're looking to produce a final output, we may have to do some work with some other tools to create the precision we're looking for.