[l008com]

Here's a problem I run into regularly trying to whip up simple patterns for web pages. I need a way to take a greyscale pattern, and colorize it. But colorize it in a way where I can tightly control the average color of the end result. Average color meaning, lets say the result of a 35 x 35 eyedropper. In case I'm not being clear, here's an example.

Lets take this familiar pattern:


That could look good as the background of a web page. But, the web page isn't dark grey. Here is the current background color (saved as an image but it's just a solid color) for a particular web page:


What I'm trying to do, is come up with a way where I can colorize the pattern, so that the average color of the pattern is still the same as the solid color (in this case #EEE8AA).
I know several different techniques for colorizing a pattern like this, but all of them make the pattern much darker overall. And that's not what I want at all.
I was able to come up with a pretty easy way to do this when the end result color was also a grey. It's pretty easy to adjust the brightness on a linear scale until eyedropper test show an average color that is right where you want it. But adding color to the mix makes it much more complicated. And a light color too.

Any ideas how to make this happen?

[andi*pandi]

There are myriad ways.

Oldskool: Copy the greyscale pattern, paste to a new channel, select the channel pixels, and then go to a new layer and fill with your preferred color, perhaps several times. This technique works better with darker colors. Your yellow doesn't show up very well here so I picked a darker color.





Use image>adjustment>color match to change the hue/shade. Create a layer with your preferred color and choose that to match. Maybe in this case use levels on the greyscale pattern first before merging to make it lighter.



Convert to greyscale, convert to monotone/duotone to mix with your preferred color:

[l008com]

Yeah there are several ways to apply A pattern to A color, but what I'm trying to do is match the 'average' color of a pattern to an exact color. Think eyedropper when I say average. It's especially difficult with light images, as any way I add pattern darkens the image.

[l008com]

Match Color... could work if I could give it a target color, and let it match that color mathematically, rather than me just moving a bunch of sliders and trying to "eyeball" it.

[l008com]

And it's not helping that Photoshop is so buggy, I can't even resize a window unless I select that window first.

[l008com]

Here is the best I was able to get. I think I inverted the greyscale image, but it behind a solid layer of #EEE8AA. Then with just normal transparency, got just enough pattern to show. Then I adjusted the brightness and contrast, and the levels to get it pretty close to the original. It's ok, but not the mathematically perfect color matching I was hoping for.