Expert: LizaL - 10/20/2004

Question
I only have Photoshop Elements (v2.0), and I am considering making a web page.

For a general theme I plan to use various sketches by Da Vinci.  My problem is very few that I have found have matching color tones.  I have one with color I find to be suitable and am having a difficult time trying to get the others to match.  They are all varying shades/flavors of a basic sort of sepia.  Is there an easy way to do it?  Or just lots of trial and error?  Thanks in advance.

Answer
Hi Ben,

Right offhand, I can think of a couple of things you can do that wouldn't be so "trial and error," because that can be frustrating, huh!

Open the image you say you find suitable, and open one of the "questionable" images beside it. In the first image, the "correct" one, take your eyedropper tool and touch it on a part of the image that you want to change the other image to. The eyedropper tool measures color -- it'll take the color you've touched and place it as the Foreground color for your swatches, in your tool palette.

Now you have a color to try and match the other image to. You might want to click on this color and write down its RGB equivalent when the Color Picker pops up.

In the other image, in the Layers palette, create a new Adjustment layer. I don't have Elements, but I *think* you can do Adjustment layers there. At any rate, look under the Layers pulldown menu and see if the selection New>Adjustment Layer is available. If so, create an adjustment layer, choosing Hue and Saturation. You'll use this layer, which appears as the top layer, to make color changes. Make changes to the color of this layer, until you've adjusted the image to match the color of the foreground swatch.

You can also make use of the layer blending modes such as Multiply, Soft Light, Linear Light, etc. -- these will all alter the overall colors of your image.

If you get too frustrated with these things, you can always make Duo- or Tritones of all the images, even the one you like.

To do this, open an image and go to the Image pulldown menu and select Mode. Make the image Grayscale. Then go back to the Image pulldown menu and select Duotone. In the pop-up menu where it says Monotone, select Duotone. Now you can click on the color swatches and select colors to create the sepia effect you like. Make sure the Preview box is checked, and you can see what you're doing as you do it. Make note of the colors you use, and then simply make ALL your images that same sepia, using the same process.

To me, making everything the same duotone would probably be the quickest and easiest solution. You can also make Tritones and Quadtones, using three and four colors in combination. Just find a color combination you like, and make all the images that same combination. If you're feeling particularly brave and experimental, LOL, you can even play around with the curves of the tone method you select. The curves are represented by the box on the left of the color swatch.

But if anything I've suggested doesn't work well for you, let me know and we'll come up with something else!

Lisa