Photoshop Color Replacement Tool Tutorial

July 4, 2014September 21, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Designing, Photoshop, TechnologyLeave a Comment

The Color Replacement Tool is not the most professional way to change colors in an image and won’t always give you the results you need, but it usually works well for simple tasks and it’s such an easy tool to use that it’s worth giving it a try before moving on to more advanced and time consuming methods.

Selecting The Color Replacement Tool

The Color Replacement Tool was first introduced in Photoshop CS, and if you’re using Photoshop CS or CS2, you’ll find the Color Replacement Tool nested under the Healing Brush in the Tools palette. To access it, click and hold your mouse button down on the Healing Brush until a fly-out menu appears, then select the Color Replacement Tool from the menu.

In Photoshop CS3, Adobe changed things around a bit and moved the Color Replacement Tool in with the regular Brush Tool, so if you’re using Photoshop CS3 or CS4 (which is what I’m using here), click and hold your mouse button down on the Brush Tool, then select the Color Replacement Tool from the fly-out menu:

In Photoshop CS3 and CS4, the Color Replacement Tool is nested under the Brush Tool. In CS and CS2, it’s under the Healing Brush.

With the Color Replacement Tool selected, your mouse cursor will change into a circle with a small target symbol in the center of it. As I mentioned, if you’re familiar with the Background Eraser, this will look very familiar to you since both tools use the exact same cursor:

The Color Replacement Tool’s cursor is made up of a simple circle with a target symbol in the middle, just like the Background Eraser.

You can adjust the size of the circle directly from your keyboard using the bracket keys, which are found to the right of the letter P on most keyboards. Press the left bracket key ( [ ) to make the circle smaller or the right bracket key ( ] ) to make it larger. To change the hardness of the brush edges, just add the Shift key. Press Shift+left bracket ( [ ) to make the edges softer or Shift+right bracket ( ] ) to make them harder.

How The Color Replacement Tool Works

As you drag the Color Replacement Tool over your image, Photoshop continuously samples the color that’s directly under the target symbol in the center of the tool’s cursor. This is the color that will be replaced, and it will be replaced with your current Foreground color. Any pixels that fall within the larger circle surrounding the target symbol that match the color being replaced will have their color changed. For example, if you pass the target symbol over an area of blue in your photo and your Foreground color is set to red, any blue pixels that the larger circle passes over will be changed to red. There’s some options we can set in the Options Bar to alter the behavior of the tool (which we’ll look at shortly), but essentially, that’s how it works.

You can see what your Foreground color is currently set to by looking at the Foreground color swatch near the bottom of the Tools palette. By default, it’s set to black:

Black is the default Foreground color, but it’s probably not the color you’ll want to use.

To change the Foreground color, simply click directly on the color swatch, then choose a new color from the Color Picker. I’ll choose a green color, just for fun. Click OK to close out of the Color Picker when you’re done:

Use the Color Picker to choose a new Foreground color.

If I look again in my Tools palette, I see that the Foreground color swatch has changed to the new color. If I paint on an image with the Color Replacement Tool at this point, whichever color I drag the target symbol over will be replaced with green:

The newly chosen color appears in the color swatch.

As an example, here’s a photo of a young girl holding a balloon:

The girl looks happy, but the balloon looks blue.

She may look happy with her blue balloon, but what she really wanted was a green balloon. As luck would have it, I just happen to have my Foreground color currently set to green, so let’s see what we can do for her. With the Color Replacement Tool selected, I’ll move the target symbol over the blue balloon in the image and click my mouse button. As soon as I click, two things happen. First, Photoshop samples the blue color under the target symbol so it knows which color to replace. Then, any blue pixels that fall within the larger circle surrounding the target symbol immediately change to green, since green is now my Foreground color:

Photoshop samples the blue color and replaces all blue pixels within the circle with green.

To change the rest of the balloon to green, I just need to keep my mouse button held down and continue dragging the Color Replacement Tool over the remaining blue areas. As long as I keep the target symbol over the blue balloon and don’t stray off into other areas of the image, which would cause Photoshop to sample a different color, only the blue color will be replaced with green:

Keeping the target symbol over the blue area as I paint.

If I accidentally move the target symbol outside of the balloon and over the yellow wall behind it, Photoshop samples the color of the wall and begins changing it to green as well:

By moving the target symbol outside of the balloon, Photoshop starts replacing other colors with green.

If this happens, simply undo the last step by pressing Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac), or undo multiple steps by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Z (Win) / Command+Option+Z (Mac) as many times as needed, then continue on.

Tolerance

Everything seems to be going smoothly as I paint over the balloon until I get to the edges. If you look closely, you can see some faint blue fringing that the Color Replacement Tool is having trouble with:

Some of the original blue color remains along the edges of the balloon.

I mentioned a few moments ago that there are several options available to us in the Options Bar for altering the behavior of the Color Replacement Tool, and one of these options is Tolerance. The Tolerance setting determines how different a color can be from the sampled color for Photoshop to replace it with the Foreground color. The default value is 30%, which is a good starting point. Unfortunately, it’s not quite high enough in this case for Photoshop to be able to include the shade of blue right along the edges of the balloon.

I’ll increase my Tolerance value to 50%, which will allow the Color Replacement Tool to affect a wider range of colors:

Increasing the Tolerance setting in the Options Bar.

With a higher Tolerance value entered, I’ll undo my last step and try again. This time, as I move along the edge of the balloon, the Color Replacement Tool is able to remove the blue fringing:

The blue along the edge of the balloon has been successfully changed to green.

I’ll finish painting over the remaining areas as our once blue balloon is magically transformed into green thanks to the Color Replacement Tool and a little boost in the Tolerance value:

The Color Replacement Tool was able to change the balloon’s color with little effort.

Sampling Colors From The Image
In the above example, I randomly chose a new color for the balloon from Photoshop’s Color Picker, but I could just as easily have selected a color directly from the photo itself. To do that, with the Color Replacement Tool active, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, which will temporarily switch you to the Eyedropper Tool (you’ll see your cursor change into an eyedropper). Click on an area of the photo that contains the color you want to use. Photoshop will sample that color and make it your Foreground color. I’ll click on the pinkish-red top she’s wearing:

Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and click on an area of the photo to sample a color.

If I look at the Foreground color swatch in the Tools palette, I see that the color I clicked on has become my Foreground color:

The sampled color appears in the Foreground color swatch.

With the color sampled directly from the image, I can paint over the balloon once again with the Color Replacement Tool to change its color:

The green balloon, originally blue, is now red.

Notice that even though we’ve essentially painted a color over top of the balloon, it retained its shiny, reflective appearance. If we had simply grabbed the regular Brush Tool and painted over it, the balloon would look like nothing more than a flat surface with no life to it. So how was the Color Replacement Tool able to keep the balloon’s texture and reflections? For the answer to that, we need to look at more of the options in the Options Bar, which we’ll do next!

The Blend Modes

The reason the Color Replacement Tool is able to paint a new color over an object or an area of a photo without losing the texture detail is because it uses blend modes to blend the new color in with the image. There’s four blend modes to choose from (Hue, Saturation, Color, and Luminosity), all of which can be selected from the Modeoption in the Options Bar. The default blend mode is Color:

The Mode option allows us to change the blend mode for the Color Replacement Tool.

If you’ve ever taken a Color Theory 101 class, you probably know that what most of us think of as the color of an object is really a combination of three things – hue, saturation and brightness. Each of the four blend modes we can select for the Color Replacement Tool will change which of these three aspects of the original color will be affected.

Hue: The Hue blend mode will change only the basic color itself. It will not change the saturation or brightness of the original color. This mode is useful for images where the colors are not very intense and will usually produce very subtle changes.

Saturation: The Saturation blend mode changes only the saturation of the original color. The hue and brightness are not affected. This is useful for reducing the intensity of a color, or even removing color completely.

Color: Color is the default blend mode and will change both the hue and saturation. The brightness will remain unchanged. This is the blend mode you’ll use most often.

Luminosity: Finally, the Luminosity blend mode will simply match the brightness of the original color to the brightness of the new color. Hue and saturation are unaffected.

In this photo below, an orange balloon seems ready to split from the group and fly off on its own adventure into the sky:

The original image.

One way to make the balloon stand out even more from the others in the image might be to reduce the color saturation of some of the other balloons below it. I don’t want to change the actual color of the balloons, just the intensity of them. To do that, with the Color Replacement Tool selected, I’ll change my blend mode option in the Options Bar to Saturation:

Changing the blend mode to Saturation.

If I wanted to completely desaturate the balloons, removing their color entirely, I’d set my Foreground color to either black, white or any shade of gray, but since I want a more subtle effect, I’ll just sample one of the less saturated colors in the image by holding down my Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key to temporarily switch to the Eyedropper Tool, then I’ll click on the color I want. I’ll choose a less saturated yellow. The color itself makes no difference since the Saturation blend mode won’t change any of the original colors. It will only affect the saturation:

Sampling one of the less saturated colors in the image.

With a less saturated color now set as my Foreground color and my blend mode set to Saturation, I’ll simply paint over any balloons that need their saturation level reduced, adjusting my brush size with the left and right bracket keys on the keyboard and changing the Tolerance value in the Options Bar as needed. Here, we can see the difference in color saturation as I paint over one of the other orange balloons:

Reducing the color saturation of one of the balloons by painting over it in Saturation mode.

I’ll continue painting over any other balloons that need their color saturation reduced. Here’s the completed result:

The orange balloon floating above the others now stands out even more thanks to its higher color saturation.

The Brightness Problem

There’s one situation, unfortunately, where the Color Replacement Tool tends to fail miserably, and that’s when there’s a big difference in brightness between the original color in the image and the color you want to replace it with. Let’s say I wanted to replace the orange in that one balloon we’ve been focusing on with the dark purple color from one of the other balloons. From everything we’ve seen so far, it should be simple enough, right?

First, I’ll set the colors in the image back to what they were originally by going up to the File menu at the top of the screen and choosing the Revert command. Then, with the Color Replacement Tool selected, I’ll hold down my Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key and click on one of the purple balloons to sample the color:

Sampling a purple color to set as my Foreground color.

I’ll set my blend mode in the Options Bar back to Color, the default setting. Then, I’ll paint over the orange balloon to change its color to dark purple. Here’s the result:

Something’s not quite right.

Hmm. It’s definitely purple, but it doesn’t quite look like the other purple balloons, does it? The problem is that it’s much lighter than the other purple balloons, and that’s because the original color of the balloon was much lighter than the dark purple color I sampled. The Color blend mode had no effect on the brightness. In fact, the only blend mode that does change the brightness is Luminosity, so let’s try that one. I’ll change my blend mode in the Options Bar to Luminosity:

The Luminosity blend mode matches the brightness of the original color to the brightness of the new color.

I’ll undo my steps to change the balloon back to its original orange color, and then, with my blend mode set to Luminosity this time, I’ll try replacing the orange with dark purple:

Suddenly the light purple didn’t look so bad.

I think it’s safe to say that things did not go well. The Luminosity blend mode definitely made the balloon darker, but it’s still orange, and now most of the texture detail is gone! It barely looks like a balloon at all at this point, and this is the problem we face with the Color Replacement Tool. It works great for simple tasks where you only need to change the hue and/or saturation of a color, but if there’s too much of a difference in brightness values between the original color and the new color, you’ll probably want to try something else.

Sampling Options

Directly to the right of the blend mode option in the Options Bar is a row of three small icons. Each of these icons represents a different sampling option for the Color Replacement Tool, and they work exactly the same here as they do for Photoshop’s Background Eraser. From left to right, we have Continuous (the default setting), Onceand Background Swatch. Simply click on the icons to switch between them as needed:

From left to right – the Continuous, Once and Background Swatch sampling options.

These sampling options control how Photoshop samples colors in the image as you move the target symbol over them, or if it samples them at all. With Continuous selected, Photoshop continually looks for new colors to replace as you drag the Color Replacement Tool around. Any new color the target symbol passes over becomes the new color to replace. This is the setting you’ll use most often and works best when there’s a lot of variation in the color of the object.

With Once selected, Photoshop will only sample the color you initially click on regardless of how many other colors you drag over (as long as you keep your mouse button held down). This option works best if you’re replacing a large area of solid color. You can also try the Once option if you find that Continuous is causing the Color Replacement Tool to bleed into other nearby areas and the Tolerance option doesn’t seem to help.

Finally, you won’t use it very often (if ever), but the Background Swatch setting will replace whatever color is currently set as your Background color. This option may prove useful if neither of the other two sampling options is working for you. Click on the Background color swatch in the Tools palette and select a color from the Color Picker that matches, as close as possible, the color in the image you want to replace. Try adjusting the Tolerance value if the color you chose wasn’t quite close enough.

The Background Swatch sampling option will replace the Background color with the Foreground color.

Limits

Another option that works exactly the same with the Color Replacement Tool as it does with the Background Eraser is Limits, which controls where Photoshop can look for colors to replace. The three choices are Contiguous,Discontiguous and Find Edges. Of the three, you’ll really only ever use the first two:

The Limits option.

The default setting for the Limits option is Contiguous, which means that the Color Replacement Tool can only change the color of pixels in the area the target symbol in the center of the cursor is touching. It won’t affect pixels that match the sampled color but are separated from the target symbol by an area of a different color unless you physically move the target symbol into the new area. The opposite of this is Discontiguous, which allows the Color Replacement Tool to replace the color of any pixels that match the sampled color and fall within the boundaries of the cursor, whether those pixels are in the same area as the target symbol or not.

Anti-Alias

The final option for the Color Replacement Tool is Anti-alias, which is selected by default:

The Anti-alias option.

Keep this option selected to smooth out the edges around the areas the Color Replacement Tool is affecting.

And there we have it!

Originally published at Photoshop Essentials.

The Quick Selection Tool In Photoshop for Auto Selection

March 31, 2014September 23, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin Designing, Photoshop, Technology, WebLeave a Comment

First introduced in Photoshop CS3, the Quick Selection Tool is somewhat similar to the Magic Wand in that it also selects pixels based on tone and color. But the Quick Selection Tool goes far beyond the Magic Wand’s limited abilities by also looking for similar textures in the image, which makes it great at detecting the edges of objects. And unlike the Magic Wand where we click on an area and hope for the best, the Quick Selection Tool works more like a brush, allowing us to select areas simply by “painting” over them! In fact, as we’ll see in this tutorial, it often works so well and so quickly that if you’re using Photoshop CS3 or higher (I’m using Photoshop CS5 here), the Quick Selection Tool could easily become your main selection tool of choice.

Selecting The Quick Selection Tool

To select the Quick Selection Tool, click on its icon in Photoshop’s Tools panel, or press the letter W on your keyboard to select it with the shortcut:

The Quick Selection Tool is found near the top of the Tools panel.

Making Selections

Here’s an image I have open in Photoshop:

A child pushing a wheelbarrow filled with pumpkins. Image licensed from Shutterstock by Photoshop Essentials.com

The original image.

For this image, I’d like to keep the original colors in the main subject (the child pushing the wheelbarrow filled with pumpkins) and colorize the rest of the background with a single color. To do that, I’ll first need to select the main subject. I could try drawing a freehand selection around everything with the Lasso Tool, but Lasso Tool selections tend to look rough and unprofessional. The Pen Tool would work great with this image thanks to all the sharp edges and smooth curves, but drawing a path around the main subject would take some time. The Magnetic Lasso Tool would also work well due to the strong contrast between the main subject and the background. But let’s see how well the Quick Selection Tool can select the area we need.

To begin my selection, I’ll move the Quick Selection Tool’s cursor into the top left corner of the child’s sweater and I’ll click once with my mouse. An initial selection outline appears around the area I clicked on:

An initial selection outline appears in the top left of the sweater.

So far so good, but obviously there’s much more I still need to select, which means I’ll need to add to my existing selection. Normally, to add to a selection, we need to hold down the Shift key on the keyboard to switch the tool to its “Add to selection” mode, but the Quick Selection Tool is different. It’s already in “Add to selection” mode by default, indicated by the small plus sign (+) displayed in the center of the tool’s cursor.

If you look in the Options Bar along the top of the screen, you’ll see a series of three icons which let us switch between the tool’s three selection modes (from left to right – New selection, Add to selection and Subtract from selection). The “Add to selection” option (middle one) is already chosen for us, since the whole point of the Quick Selection Tool is to continue adding to the selection until you’ve selected everything you need:

The “Add to selection” mode is already chosen by default with the Quick Selection Tool.

There’s two ways to use the Quick Selection Tool. One is to simply click on different areas of the image just like we would with the Magic Wand, and just as I did a moment ago to begin my selection. The more common way, though, is to click and drag over the area you need to select as if you were painting with a brush. As you drag, Photoshop continuously analyzes the area, comparing color, tone and texture, and does its best job to figure out what it is you’re trying to select, often with amazing results.

To add to my initial selection, then, I’ll simply click and drag along the left edge of the sweater. The area I drag over is added to the selection. As long as I keep the cursor inside the sweater and don’t drag over the sky or the trees in the background, only the sweater itself gets added:

Keep the cursor over the area you want to add to the selection.

If I do accidentally extend my cursor into the background area, the background gets added to the selection as well, which isn’t what I want. If that happens, press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) on your keyboard to undo it and try again. A bit later on, we’ll see how to remove unwanted areas of a selection with the Quick Selection Tool, but a good habit to get into here is to not try to select everything in a single drag. If you do, and you make a mistake and need to undo it, you’ll undo everything you’ve done. Using a series of short drags, releasing your mouse button between each one, is a better and safer way to work:

Part of the background is accidentally selected. Press Ctrl+Z (Win) / Command+Z (Mac) to undo.

I’ll continue clicking and dragging over the sweater to add it to my selection:

Adding the rest of the sweater to the selection was as easy as dragging over it.

Resizing The Cursor
If you have a large area to select, you may want to increase the size of the cursor so you won’t need to drag as much (I know, us Photoshop users can be a lazy bunch sometimes). Likewise, selecting smaller areas often requires a smaller cursor. The Quick Selection Tool’s cursor can be resized quickly from the keyboard the same way we’d resize a brush. Press the left bracket key ( [ ) to make the cursor smaller or the right bracket key ( ] ) to make it larger. Typically, a smaller cursor will give you more accurate results.

I’ll increase my cursor size a little and continue dragging over the pumpkins and the wheelbarrow to add them to my selection. In the few seconds it took me to drag over things with the Quick Selection Tool, Photoshop was able to do a pretty outstanding job of selecting my main subject for me:

The initial selection of the main subject is complete. Estimated time: 10 seconds.

Subtracting From A Selection

The Quick Selection Tool did an impressive job with the initial selection of my main subject, but it’s not perfect. There’s a few areas here and there that need to be removed from the selection, like this gap between the sweater and the child’s arm where the background is showing through:

The Quick Selection Tool selected a few areas that shouldn’t have been included.

To remove an area from a selection, hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, which temporarily switches the Quick Selection Tool to Subtract from selection mode (you could also select the “Subtract from selection” option in the Options Bar but you’d need to remember to switch it back to the “Add to selection” mode when you’re done). The small plus sign in the center of the cursor will be replaced with a minus sign (-). Then, with Alt / Option still held down, click and drag inside the area you need to remove. I’ll need to make my cursor smaller here by pressing the left bracket key a few times:

Hold down Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) and drag over areas you need to remove from the selection.

I’ll do the same thing along the bottom of the wheelbarrow where the background is showing through. It often helps to zoom in on the image to remove smaller areas like these:

A few more unwanted areas to remove.

And with that, my selection is complete! Not bad at all for a minute or two’s worth of effort:

The final selection.

With my main subject now selected, to colorize the background, I’ll invert the selection by pressing Shift+Ctrl+I(Win) / Shift+Command+I (Mac), which will deselect my main subject and select everything around it instead. Then I’ll click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel:

The New Adjustment Layer icon.

I’ll choose a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer from the list:

Choosing a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

If you’re using Photoshop CS5 as I am, the Hue/Saturation controls will appear in the Adjustments Panel. In CS4 and earlier, the Hue/Saturation dialog box will appear. To colorize the image, I’ll select the Colorize option by clicking inside its checkbox. Then I’ll drag the Hue slider a little towards the right to select a brown color similar to the color of the wheelbarrow:

Select “Colorize”, then dial in a color with the Hue slider.

Click OK to exit out of the Hue/Saturation dialog box when you’re done (Photoshop CS4 and earlier only). Finally, I’ll change the blend mode of my adjustment layer to Color so that only the colors in the image, not the brightness values, are affected:

Change the blend mode to “Color”.

Here, after changing the blend mode to Color, is my final result:

The Quick Selection Tool made colorizing the background easy.

Additional Options

The Quick Selection Tool includes a couple of additional options in the Options Bar. If your document contains multiple layers and you want Photoshop to analyze all the layers when making the selection, check the Sample All Layers option. Leaving it unchecked tells Photoshop to include only the layer that’s currently active (highlighted in blue) in the Layers panel:

Choose “Sample All Layers” if you want to include multiple layers in the selection.

If you’re running Photoshop on a fairly powerful computer, selecting the Auto-Enhance option can produce smoother, higher quality selection edges (they tend to look a bit blocky on their own), but you may find the Quick Selection Tool takes slightly longer to do its thing with Auto-Enhance enabled. I’d suggest turning Auto-Enhance on unless you find yourself running into performance problems:

Auto-Enhance can give smoother results but may result in slower performance.

And there we have it!

[Ref: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/basics/selections/quick-selection-tool/]

How to Remove Text from a Photo in Photoshop: 14 Steps

March 17, 2014September 28, 2022 by Muhammad Jawaid Shamshadin TechnologyLeave a Comment

How to Remove Text from a Photo in Photoshop

Removing Text Using Content-Aware Fill Removing Text Using the Clone Stamp in Earlier or Latest Versions of Photoshop

Do you have a great photo or image that is ruined by unnecessary text? This article will show you how remove text from a photo in Photoshop using either content-aware fill for CS5 or later or the clone stamp for earlier versions of Photoshop.

Method 1 of 2: Removing Text Using Content-Aware Fill

1

Open your image in Photoshop.
2

Choose the “Lasso tool” from the toolbar on the left side of the screen.
- Click near the edge of your text and drag the tool until you’ve created a rough outline around the text.
- Make sure that you leave a thin border around the text. This action helps Photoshop to do a better job of blending the background after you remove the text.
3

Click on “Edit” and select “Fill” from the drop-down menu. Alternatively, just press Shift+F5. A box labeled “Fill” will pop up on the screen.
4

Select “Content-Aware” from the drop-down menu next to “Use.”
5

Click “OK.” Wait for Photoshop to fill in the space left when the text is eliminated.
6

Press CTRL-D to deselect the image when the fill is complete.
7

Save the altered image.

Method 2 of 2: Removing Text Using the Clone Stamp in Earlier or Latest Versions of Photoshop

1

Open your image in Photoshop.
2

Click the clone stamp on the tools pallet. Alternatively, press CTRL-S.
- Choose a soft-tipped brush with a flow rate between 10 and 30 percent for most jobs.
- Start with opacity at 95 percent. You can make adjustments as needed.
3

Click the Layers panel. Select the original layer in the Layers panel.
- Drag the original layer to the “Create a New Layer” button, which is the symbol to the left of the trash can.
- Alternatively, hit CTRL+J to create a new layer.
4

Place your cursor over a spot that is as close to the lettering as possible. Hold Alt and then left-click on your selection.
- This spot is called your source. Essentially, you will pick up “paint” from this spot and use it to paint over your text.
- The source will move as you paint over the text, so be careful not to get too close to the lettering. If you get too close, then you will just be copying the spot you were trying to erase.
- If your source is too far away from your lettering, then the color of the background may not be appropriate for camouflaging the spot where the letters were. You will see distortion when you paint over the image.
5

Open the Options menu and choose “Aligned.” This action samples pixels continuously without losing the current sampling point. Every time you stop painting, deselect “Aligned” before you start over and reset it after you choose a new sampling point.
6

Release the Alt key and move the mouse over the lettering that you want to cover up. Left click to paint the source over the lettering.
- Notice the lighting of the background image. Make sure that the spots that you clone are lit in the same direction as the image.
- Paint in small sections rather than dragging the mouse over the letters in large strokes. This action will ensure that your work looks professional instead of blotchy.
7

Continue this process until the project is complete.

[Ref: How to Remove Text from a Photo in Photoshop: 14 Steps.]