Turning a red object into white?

elfving73elfving73 Registered Users Posts: 941 Major grins
edited October 12, 2005 in Finishing School
Hello friends!

I know how to change separate colors in photoshop (in many different ways). But yesterday I got a bit puzzled. A friend asked me to change the color of a scooter from deep red to white. Any color in the world, but I just can not turn it white and keep the luminocity (or what it is called). I think you know what I mean. Is it possible?

Regards / Matty

Comments

  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited October 10, 2005
    elfving73 wrote:
    Hello friends!

    I know how to change separate colors in photoshop (in many different ways). But yesterday I got a bit puzzled. A friend asked me to change the color of a scooter from deep red to white. Any color in the world, but I just can not turn it white and keep the luminocity (or what it is called). I think you know what I mean. Is it possible?

    Regards / Matty

    and you've tried "replace color?" i just did it on a red ship, no problem.
  • elfving73elfving73 Registered Users Posts: 941 Major grins
    edited October 10, 2005
    Yeah, I have! But when painting with white, all I get is grey. I guess I am not a wizard when it comes to color handeling. Somehow, after a while, I found a way to make it white. You learn something new everytime you open photoshop.

    Matty
  • NikolaiNikolai Registered Users Posts: 19,035 Major grins
    edited October 10, 2005
    Can you show the start and finish, please?
    I have some ideas but I might be wrong...
    I was thinking (prolly along with Andy) to selct color range, then copy it to a new layer and then simply use saturation dialog to crank up brightness until it becomes white. You may also desaturate it or change the hue if you want some shades of some different color (off-white, etc.)
    HTH
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  • jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited October 10, 2005
    Low luminosity is gray, no such thing as low luminosity white
    elfving73 wrote:
    Hello friends!

    I know how to change separate colors in photoshop (in many different ways). But yesterday I got a bit puzzled. A friend asked me to change the color of a scooter from deep red to white. Any color in the world, but I just can not turn it white and keep the luminocity (or what it is called). I think you know what I mean. Is it possible?

    Regards / Matty
    I think what you may be finding is that if you remove the color and try to keep the luminosity, what you are going to get is gray. It will only look white to you as you start turning the luminosity up. There is no such thing as white that isn't bright. Non-bright white is gray. So, if you want it brighter or whiter, you just need to turn the luminosity of that area up. You can still keep some of the texture or tone definition as long as you don't turn it all the way up, but it will look more white only when you raise the overall luminosity of that area.

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  • ruttrutt Registered Users Posts: 6,511 Major grins
    edited October 12, 2005
    If you stop using a white font and post your shot, I might be able to help.

    I can't read white fonts because I use the wite background option.
    If not now, when?
  • Mike LaneMike Lane Registered Users Posts: 7,106 Major grins
    edited October 12, 2005
    Couldn't you use a hue saturation layer with a layer mask (for all the non-scooter parts of the picture)? Put the foreground color to white and click colorize. See what happens.

    Maybe nothing good, I haven't tried it with anything. ne_nau.gif
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  • edgeworkedgework Registered Users Posts: 257 Major grins
    edited October 12, 2005
    elfving73 wrote:
    Hello friends!

    I know how to change separate colors in photoshop (in many different ways). But yesterday I got a bit puzzled. A friend asked me to change the color of a scooter from deep red to white. Any color in the world, but I just can not turn it white and keep the luminocity (or what it is called). I think you know what I mean. Is it possible?

    Regards / Matty

    Try a gradient map. Start with the black/white gradient but place a couple more stops with shades of grey in between, and slide them around until you have a believable range for shadows. White or not, shadows are going to be grey and deep shadows will approach black. The beauty of the gradient map is that it retains the relationship between highlight/midtone/shadow, but allows you to map whatever color you wish into those slots. More powerful than simply replacing color, as you can recast the overall lightness/darkness of the object to conform to the fact that white is lighter than red. While it can be a pain trying to revise individual colors in the gradient, a curve layer placed on top treats the image as you'd expect a curve layer to function.

    Of course, you'll need to mask out the red parts, but you might be able to pull that off real quick in LAB through blending sliders. Don't know what the image looks like, but if you dupe the image and convert to lab, then pull the green anchor to neutral in the a channel and pull the blue anchor to neutral in the b channel, you'll pretty much have eliminated everything but red. Merge visible to a new layer and drag it back to your original. Group it with your gradient map layer and no more red.
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