[chasg]

Hi All,

A client has asked me to change the colour of the t-shirt in the image below (everyone at the event was wearing the same shirts, and they want colour added to make them look not so uniform).

What I'd normally do is use a use/saturation adjustment layer, set to "colorize" and drop in a colour. I've only ever used this technique on small areas before, and it's not looking all that realistic. Any other suggestions as to tinting techniques?

Thanks in advance for any advice,

Chas

http://homepage.mac.com/chasg/client...0Southside.jpg

[calverson]

Is this a joke?

The T-shirt pictured is black and white text... What color needs to be changed?

What I would do would be to use PS's Selective Color, and find what exactly you want to change, and do it in there.

[chasg]

"tint n. A gradation of a color made by adding white to it to lessen its saturation."

To reiterate: I want to add a colour to the t-shirt, not to the writing (as a matter of fact, I'm removing the writing). From white to, say, a tint of blue or green, realistically. I'm afraid that you didn't read my OP very carefully (or I was being ambiguous, if so, mea culpa).

Answers from elsewhere have included suggestions to use Selective Color set to Absolute and then use the White drop down to adjust the colour (set to its default of Relative won't of course have an effect on a white object). This has eased the selection process (only acting on white pixels), but is producing a pretty flat result. I've used Curves to bring down the darker tones in the shirt to make the result look a little more realistic (but I'm still not happy, even after manually burning down some shadows that needed it a bit more).

Thanks anyway,

Chas

[eyevaan]

make a selection of the t-shirt so you can create a mask and then use the color adjustment layer to Hue shift [using colorize] to color you want. It is non-destructive and very easy to adjust to whatever levels you are trying to achieve.

[calverson]

Originally Posted by chasg 

"tint n. A gradation of a color made by adding white to it to lessen its saturation."

To reiterate: I want to add a colour to the t-shirt, not to the writing (as a matter of fact, I'm removing the writing). From white to, say, a tint of blue or green, realistically. I'm afraid that you didn't read my OP very carefully (or I was being ambiguous, if so, mea culpa).

Answers from elsewhere have included suggestions to use Selective Color set to Absolute and then use the White drop down to adjust the colour (set to its default of Relative won't of course have an effect on a white object). This has eased the selection process (only acting on white pixels), but is producing a pretty flat result. I've used Curves to bring down the darker tones in the shirt to make the result look a little more realistic (but I'm still not happy, even after manually burning down some shadows that needed it a bit more).

Thanks anyway,

Chas

My bad - in hindsight I misduplicated your question.

Originally Posted by eyevaan 

make a selection of the t-shirt so you can create a mask and then use the color adjustment layer to Hue shift [using colorize] to color you want. It is non-destructive and very easy to adjust to whatever levels you are trying to achieve.

Right, use Quick Mask mode to get your selection, does not have to be exact exact, but pretty good, and then copy and paste the selection to a new layer, and then colorize that layer. Make sure that the layer is set to "darken" as then it won't change the color of any pixels below it that are not white.

[bluedog]

One issue I see with your image sample is the 'white' you wish to colorize appears to be blown out a bit. It looks fine as white, but when then colored to another those solid white areas look flat. There isn't enough information to probably make a believable recolor without adding some depth back into the image. If you have the images taken originally in raw or could do another scan from the negative (you didn't say what the source images were in format) and underexpose to get some of the detail if there is any in the source.

Just an observation that may help you to tackle the problem.

[Synotic]

As bluedog mentioned, probably the biggest reason that you end result is looking flat is because the highlights are being lost in the final image. Even so, there aren't really highlights in the original image because there are just shadows and darker midtones.

That said, it won't be great, but you can kind of fake it by copying the original shirt using your mask, pasting it over the tint, manipulating it heavily to pump up the highlights (using something like levels or curves) and then changing the blending mode appropriately (probably something like screen or one of the "light"s).

In fact, in preparing this response, I already did it for you:



You can click the image to download the Photoshop file. I use a similar technique for things like hair and shadows which can sometimes be difficult to mask.

[KeriVit]

Very helpful Synotic. I took a shot at it myself and failed. But, you got the right tweek.

[chasg]

Thanks everyone, especially Syontic, for the assistance.

Synotic, nice tweak, much appreciated (being able to check out the PSD was particularly helpful, did you mask by hand?). I'm afraid I had to deliver the final image before you posted, unfortunately, because your version looks more natural than mine did (but I have a new tool for the next time, many thanks! :-)

Chas

[chasg]

Wow, spam has filtered through. Bummer.

[Thorzdad]

Spammer sent to the Forbidden Zone