Lee

I was hired to do some pretty basic photoshop stuff for a local retailer. Kinda boring but it helps pay the bills. When she showed me what she wanted done I was thinking to myself, "pretty basic". Then came the reality.............. [confused]

There are a million ways to select something. I have tried most of them on this project but it is still taking me WAY too much time.

My assignment, to change many of the colors on these rugs to new colors she has provided me on a color sample sheet. How would you guys get this done the quickest and most efficient way? The Magic Wand tool is not the answer as it gives a very rough selection and I need the kind of lines the polygonal Lasso Tool would make (except that is so slow and time consuming). Any ideas?

Thanks

Lee

SCync

The first thing I'd try is a Replace Color adjustment, as there is good color contrast.

Stroker

I actually did a few plugs that might be perfect for this. Maybe. I'll have to do a little more playing.

But can't help but wonder if there is an easier way than making those kinds of selections. Maybe H/S, Selective Colour, or maybe even Match Colour will do the trick.

Yeah, give Match Colour a try.

Feel like posting the target colours?
This would be a great opportunity for me to test some things that I've been working on.

edit:
Ah, yeah contrast.
Boosting the contrast with Levels should help.
Just make the black and white points a little tighter.

Also, maybe try reducing or simplifying the colours. Maybe Cut Out, Posterize, or something hacky in Index mode.

Stroker

I think I'm getting the hang of this. I still need a bit more practice, but I think shows promise.

Lee, are you Win/PC?

ronmatt

open the photo then open a new window, same size and ppi. Copy the orig. into the new window. Use the magic wand, select the white background and delete. Make a duplicate layer. Now the world is yours.
You can go to blending modes add a color overlay and screw around with the densities, or go to Styles>Photographic Effects and mess with densities or convert to cmyk and do some things with curves. When you get what you like, Merge and save.
Have fun

Lee

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

Stroker,
I'm on a WinXP system for the next month or two. Then going back to Mac. I'll try and get you the color sheet she provided when I get a little time. It's pretty small and she had numbers on the colors she wants. I don't know if that will show up well on a small website image.

Ron,
I'll have to give your suggestion a try. I am new to PS and what you described I have not done (or anything close to that) so I'll have to stumble my way through it. Thanks

lasa

I usually change the color of things using the Hue and saturation..It leaves you in "master", press edit chose a color say "red". Then see the two rainbow strips at the bottom. The red will have start and stop grey lines and two side triangles that are transition points so to speak. The more you narrow the triangles (toward the center) the less transitional colors of red (in my example) you'll affect..same goes for moving the stops in and out. You restrict the reds to be affected. Then move the above hue slider looking for the color you need.

Anyway that's what I usually try and do first... in this case it didn't work..lol... very well so then I used the Magic wand set at 50%. I set it at 50% becouse I wanted it to pick up the Anti-aliased or the pixilation between colors. (30% picks up the color but not the transition colors) I don't know if you know but as you use the wand you can hold the Shift key (PC) to add to the selection.

Then I picked a color and the brush. The brush was in screen mode.

I hope something here helps you.
See not so pretty rug below..

good luck,

Lasa

Stroker

I have problems with several of Photoshop's stock tools for making selections, so I started making my own with FM. After some playing around, I think RGB Ellipsoid is the better trick.

RGB is a colour space. That space is 3D. When you define a colour with RGB values, you are defining a point in space. However, you can do more than define a single point. For example, you can define a line, a box, a sphere, a cone, and other things.

RGB Ellipsoid defines an ellipse. This is basically a sphere that you can stretch/squash in the 3 major axis. You can make it tall in the R axis, or squash it in the B axis. In RGB Ellipsoid, you are defining such an ellipse, but with the added benefit of fall-off.

This filter is still extreme beta, but functional. One thing I still have to add is right-click the preview to sample colours. For now you will have to use Info palette and manually enter the RGB values.

One of the major problems with RGB Ellipsoid is the mixing of relative and absolute. I'm still not sure how to translate between these two just yet. It's a ratio nightmare. This means that you will want to keep all 3 Radius sliders fairly close together in value. Same for all 3 Fall-Off sliders. They don't have to be exactly the same, but getting too crazy might get funky.

- Copy photograph or whatever
- Filter > Tech Slop > RGB Ellipsoid
- Set the sliders and click Okay

You will be left with greyscale in the Layers palette. From there, whatever your heart desires. Like copy-n-paste into Channels palette for masking. Or maybe leave it in Layers palette and get funky with blending modes.

Extreme beta, but functional. In the tests I did, it seems to work very well on the rug. I did try a few other things, but I'm going to keep them up my sleeve for now.

PC/Win
RGB 8-bits per channel
TS_rgbellipse.8bf

For the rug, I don't know how well chopping it up will work. If you can figure out a way without chopping it up too much, you'll probably be better off.

Trevor Somers

:} :} :}

Lee

Thanks again, everyone. A lot of good suggestions here. Looks like I've (still) got a lot to learn about PS.