Noob problem-can't replace the colour of some item in the photo to the colur desired.

[jounga]

Hello,

I'm trying to replace the color of the doors in the first pic to the color of the door in the second pic.
I've tried to play with the colorize feature in my editing software and I think I found the right color in the RGB table (saddlebrown #8B4513 rgb(139,69,19)), but unfortunately all I get is the result you can see on one of the doors in the first pic.

what am I doing wrong? perhaps I need to play more with he hue/lum/sat? I've tried it but it didn't solve the issue.


Thank you!

[Manfred M]

Not perfect but I got a couple of areas with the same colours as the sample you provided. The first thing I would do is to convert the existing cupboards to a monochrome image and then apply a colour on top. That provides a neutral base to apply the new colours to.

One can't just paint the colour as that will impact the grain of the cupboards, so I use an advanced feature in the image editor I use called blend modes that does a more sophisticated job in meshing the colour that is painted. I found that the Linear Light blending mode seems to have worked best.

Finally I sampled a couple of spots on the second image that you provided and tweaked individual colour channels to get the same Red, Green and Blue readings. I got a reading of 73, 44, 36 from the sample cupboard that you showed; nowhere near the 139,69,19. It's not nearly that red.

[jounga]

Yes! Wow, this is much better!
Could you please tell me what you did?
(I'm trying to learn so I could correct other photos as well).

Thank you very much!

PS. I imagine that you 'burned' it somehow?

[Manfred M]

Yes! Wow, this is much better!
Could you please tell me what you did?
(I'm trying to learn so I could correct other photos as well).

Thank you very much!

What software are you using?

[jounga]

I'm using Photo Pos Pro (it's the first free software that was available), but if you used Photoshop, you could just say what you did and I'll google it to find the equivalent.

[Manfred M]

I use fairly advanced techniques - adjustment layers, layer masks and blending mode when I work in Photoshop. You also need to know how to make selections so that the effect is only applied in places where these should happen:

1. Select the cupboards and desaturate them so that there is no colour content on them, but the colours of the rest of the room are protected. This provides a neutral base layer to work on and the current colour of the cabinet will not impact the outcome.

2. Sample the target colour and paint that onto a new layer with a layer mask that ensures that only the cupboards are painted. Try different blending modes to see which one shows the colour PLUS the grain of the cupboard doors. The colour should be close, but not perfect.

3. Use the colour sampler tool on the original cupboard colours to establish the appropriate R, G and B values that are in the original colour.

4. Tweak these colours (I used a combination of a levels adjustment layer + layer mask on the cupboards as well as a color adjustment layer + layer mask to achieve this. I used a colour sampler tool on the cupboards to give me a reading of the R, G and B values and tweaked until I was close to the sample colour.