Expert: LizaL - 6/15/2005

Question
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Followup To
Question -
Hello LizaL,

I have an area of yellow color in one image that I want to change.  I want it to match a specific shade of yellow in another image. I know it has something to do with the eyedropper... I've tried all the various color changing methods but can't seem to "transfer" a patch of color in one file to replace a specific color in another file. Any advice appreciated.

Best regards,
Usuff
Australia
Answer -
Hi Usuff,

There are a couple of different ways to do this, but it sounds to me like the Replace color command might work best in your particular case. The other command, Match color, is kind of an "overall" fix -- for instance, it will take the color characteristics of one picture and match them to another, meaning it won't actually take a color and change it.

But it sounds to me like you could use Replace Color pretty successfully. It's found under the Image pulldown menu, then under the Adjustments submenu.

Here's an example of what I'm going to explain (server's a little slow today; please be patient!):
http://little-works.com/all_experts/replace_color.mov

What I did here was change the gold color of the striped cushion the cat's sleeping on to a pink hue, using Replace Color, and here's how I did it:

With your image open, take your regular eyedropper from the tool box and click on the the yellow you want to change. This will make your foreground color that particular shade of yellow; not that this step is essential to using Replace Color, but you can use that color as a starting point for creating the yellow you want.

Now click on that yellow and using the sliders in the Color Picker, make it the color you want it to be. Make this desired yellow your background color by hitting X on your keyboard. Now you'll have something to refer to, once you start using Replace color.

Open Replace color. For your purposes, make sure the Selection button is ticked, and click on the leftmost eyedropper tool at the top of the dialog box. Now click on the color you want to change, in your image. You can see in the Replace color dialog box that from here you can either tinker with the hue, saturation and lightness of that yellow color, to make it match your background color, the one you changed to be the shade you desired.

Or -- you can bypass using the Hue, Saturation and Lightness sliders. With the Replace Color dialog box open, and your desired color as your background color, use that top left eyedropper in the Replace Color dialog box to select the color you want to change. Now click on the Result color box, in the lower right of the dialog box. The color picker will appear, and instead of choosing a color from it, just click on your background color. Everything that is the color of what you clicked on, in your image, will become your background color.

Both ways are viable, but if you know specifically what color you want to change to, you can make it your background color and cut to the chase, so to speak, by just clicking on it after clicking on the Result box in the Replace Color dialog.

Hope this helps! But if it doesn't make sense, please post back and we'll figure it out.

Lisa
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Lisa,
Thanks for the helpful suggestions.  

A different subject - while working with the clone tool this morning, that circle that tells you the area to be cloned just became a point. (I didn't know what I did.) I couldn't clone without seeing that circle. Try as I may to change the brush size, its opacity, its hardness, using all layers etc that circle wouldn't come back.  Eventually I had to save my files and reboot the computer to get it back.  Do you know what happened?  Thanks.
Usuff  

Answer
Hi again, Usuff,

This is a snap to fix -- just go to your Preferences pulldown menu, and under the Display and Cursors category, select Brush Size, which will return your cursor to a circle.

Check it out and you'll see that Precise gives you crosshairs, and Standard gives you the actual look of the tool you're using.

Usually this will change things immediately and you should be able to return to your document and see the circle. But in the event that it doesn't, try quitting Photoshop and then restarting it. That certainly ought to do the trick.   You don't have to go so far as to restart your machine, although that will fix it, too.

To be honest with you, I don't know exactly why this happens. It seems to happen mid-stream, too, with no warning or anything. It happens to me, too. And it's nothing to worry about. I can't find any documentation as to why it happens, and my best guess is that just by working with Photoshop for any extended period of time, preferences can get "scrambled," so to speak, and display some odd things.

But try what I've suggested and see if that works.

Hope it helps!

Lisa