Hello, Hello! Karla here and I’m going show you all how you can tweak your colors in Photoshop using the Selective Color Tool! I use it ALL the time to make the colors on my photos pop or change the color entirely. You can even use it on your scrapbook supplies and papers! Let me show you how using Photoshop or Elements.

Here is an original photograph of some pot tops…or something lol…

Now this looks pretty cool like this but I thought the colors could use some punch. But I only wanted to change the red and teal plates for this example. The selective Tool is perfect for this because it’s an easy way to target select colors. To use it your going to go to IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > SELECTIVE COLOR

Then your going play with the settings. 

I decided to change the red and blue pot tops. Since the blue color of the tops looks kind of teal-ish; the Cyan option worked better then the Blue. To pick what color family you want to change you just pull down the COLOR tab. I wouldn’t worry about the custom tab. I then got this result

So then it was ready to scap ^_^ I used this technique on all the photos in the layout below.

[ kits used: Fly Girl, Digi Essentials (stitches), Digi Essentials 5 (letter brushes) and Digi Essentials 7 (Metal Brads), Page template from Tiffany Tillman ]

Some things to note:

• To get reds more red, I start by selecting the red color from the color pull down menu. The next step I do is lower the CYAN percentage. Anytime you want to pump up or down your reds, the Cyan % does it beautifully! And as you can see from my example I tweaked some of the other settings as well.
• The blue color of the tops looks kind of teal-ish; the Cyan option worked better then the Blue. If you have ‘blues’ in your photo that you want to change then try both the Cyan and Blue percentages to see which ones work best for that image. Or use both ^_^
  

Using the Select Color Tool is not just for our photos. We can use it on our digi stash! Let’s say you love a paper but wished the flowers were pink instead of orange or that a particular shade of blue just wasn’t ‘blue’ enough for ya; using the Selective Color Tool can help in a lot of those situations! I’m going to show you an example using some papers from my Felis kit.

We’ll start out with the small square or the original pink and kraft

I’m want it to be purple and kraft. So I played with the settings like so.

I put all dials to 100% in the red pull down then…

In the Magenta option I set all the dials to 100% accept the yellow, that I set to -100%

Now my paper is purple and kraft. Or how about a pale green?

Dude…this tool is super neat-o and so simple to use! BUT….there are times when you want to change a specific color and you can’t really get it to look right because not matter what you do it changes other things as well. For example. Take a look at this paper from the same Felis kit. Here is piece of the the original paper.

Now let’s say I wanted to change the orange leaves green and leave everything else as-is. I run into the problem of changing ‘like’ colors.

When I turned the orange leaves to the green color I was looking for it also changes the pink design in some of the leaves to purple. This happens sometimes. Not a lot but it does happen. It seems to acure in more complex designs. But yeah, play with the settings and have fun pumping up those colors and changing your favorite papers to suit your needs! It’s really cool and I must say; the Selective Color Tool has become one of my favorite Photoshop tools!

I hope to see you tonight in the chat room! My chat starts @ 9pm EST! YAY!

Enjoy and until next time, Happy Scrappin’!

Related posts

• Tutorial: How to weave digital elements
• Tutorial: How to use masks in Photoshop Elements
• Tutorial: How to Use Digital Templates to Create a Desktop Background
• Tutorial: How to cut out images from patterned papers
• Tutorial: How to create custom punches

Tags: Blog, Classroom, Color, Custom, Digital Photography, Karla Dudley, Layouts, Photography, Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Pictures, Tips, Tools, Tutorials