How to "change" color???

I have a pic of my car. I would like to find an easy way to change the color of the car from blue to red.
I've tried select/color range
and Image/ adjust/ replace color.
Both worked but not well. I lost the highlites and sharpness.
Can you help?

I have a pic of my car. I would like to find an easy way to change the color of the car from blue to red.
I've tried select/color range
and Image/ adjust/ replace color.
Both worked but not well. I lost the highlites and sharpness.
Can you help?

Hoo boy. This isn't really a simple one (imo)

See, thing is, the machine has no idea what the image is whether it be a car, an giraffe, or a sweet sweet cocoa bean. It's all just pixels as far as it's concerned.

Further, your car is blue, but depending on the res/quality of the image, it could be lots of different shades of blue.

Both of the techniques you used will (to the best of my knowledge) affect only one value of whatever colour you select. So you'll change one shade of blue to red, leaving the others intact.

Firstly, you might try making as tight a selection around the body of the car as you can using the various marquee tools.

Then try ajusting the Curves (Image>>Adjust>>Curves) of the document, using the red and blue channels to work from. If you're not comfortable with Curves, you can try manipulating the colur levels using the Image>>Adjust>>Hue Saturation option.

Hope this helps.

Spectre

http://www3.sympatico.ca/the_spectre

Depending on the rest of your image, one of the channels will have a greater difference in values than the other two (if you're in RGB). Try isolating (selecting) your car starting from this image, and use the selection to copy your car to another layer.
Put a layer with the blue of your fancy on top of this one and blend both using the "hue" mode. Then merge down.

This should work. Please, show the images if you want to, ok?

If you don't work against time, time often works for you.

Good advice guys.

Here Toybox... an example of just how easy this can really be...

Below are 3 images: 1) the original; 2) the colourized version; & 3) the alpha channel for the truck.

Select your object (car, truck, house, person, whatever!), and make the selection into an Alpha channel (this is for backup reasons ONLY). Then, on a new top layer, fill the selection with whatever colour you want. Set this layer to either of these Blend Modes for best results: Hue, or Color. Each produces it's own effect - "Color" produces a more contrasted/saturated effect than Hue.

And it's really just that simple. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

TIPS:
=> Once you have your shape selected and filled with a colour (on it's own new layer), turn on the layer's "Preserve Transparency" option. Then, to experiment with different colours/textures (yes, textures!), you can just switch your Foreground colour swatch and press ALT+Delete.

=> Using the above tip, you can also manually paint (Airbrush, etc.) your object using any number of colours/textures you want, all on the same layer.

=> You don't even have to create a specific selection of your object either Toybox... you CAN, if you want, just set a new layer to Hue or Color, switch to your preferred Foreground colour, and begin Airbrushing the colour onto your object. This method though may require a little 'cleanup' if you paint outside the object's boundaries at all. But it's still an easy way to perform this task.

Hope that helps.

Mark...

[This message was edited by Mark (theKeeper) on August 21, 2001 at 17:27.]

Thanks guys!! It helped alot.
Being a "newbe" to photoshop I'm always shocked at how much it can do and how diferent people use diferent methods to get the same outcome.

I'm still having trouble but I'm on the right track.
I need to learn more about alpha channels and the many was to select a given object.
What tutorials / books do you think helped you?
I'm real thirsty for Knowledge.
post links if ya have any good ones
Thanks Tony

The Internet and many many many cups of coffee have been my professors. That's me though. I'm much too unmotivated to go out and wade through the volumes of paper material they have on digital design and so on.

I'm still finding new resources on the Internet, the main category being forums like these.

I'd ALSO recommend the "We're Here" and "Guru Gab"
forums located at

http://www.were-here.com and http://www.gurusnetwork.com respectively.

Spectre

http://www3.sympatico.ca/the_spectre