Do you have a favorite photograph of yourself (or loved one) that you just love, but can't stand the color of the shirt? Mad at your boyfriend (or girlfriend)? Take your favorite picture; change the color of the shirt or pants he is wearing to a ?less masculine? color then share it with all his poker pals! (You can always change it back once you have made up.) The Color Changer Tool in Paint Shop Pro Photo makes it so easy to change the colors in your pictures it's almost magic!
Let's give it a try, shall we?
We will be using the image above. To follow along with us, right click the image here and save the picture to your My Pictures folder.
Browse to Image with the Organizer
Open the Organizer (if necessary) [Ctrl+B]. Once the Organizer is open, use the Organizer Tree to select the proper folder and then browse through that folder to find the image you saved.
Tip:
If you know the name of your image, you could also utilize another great feature of PSPP XI's Organizer ? the search function. In the Search Field, begin typing the name of the image you are searching for. As you type into the search field, Paint Shop Pro will continuously narrow your choices to show you only the best matches in the preview window.
The blue outline around the thumbnail indicates the selected image. Double click your image to have it open in the PSPP Workspace.
Select the New Color
Click the Foreground color swatch to bring up the Material Properties dialog box. (If your Materials Palette is not showing, simply hit the F6 key on your keyboard.) Select the new color you wish to use. I choose a light pink to bring out Mr. Bob's feminine side. Don't worry... he's out cold! He'll never know what hit him.
Select the Color Changer Tool
On your main Toolbar, click the Color Changer Tool icon. If you do not see the Color Changer icon locate the Flood Fill Tool icon then click the small arrow beside it to expand the fly out menu. Click to select the Color Changer tool.
Set the Color Changer Options
Once you selected the Color Changer tool in the last step the Tool Options palette should have automatically appeared on the screen above your workspace. If you do not see the Color Changers Tool Options palette as shown in the example here tap the F4 key on your keyboard.
In the Tool Options palette, set your Tolerance to 10 (ten) then set the Edge Softness to 1 (one). The Tolerance setting in the Color Changer tool works much like it does with other Paint Shop Photo Pro tools with one small exception which will become apparent momentarily.
Determine Tolerance Settings
When you select the Magic Wand you set the Tolerance by inputting a numerical value. This number tells Paint Shop Photo Pro how much or how little tolerance you will allow to be selected from the original color. A higher setting is going to select more area than a lower setting.
For example; you are trying to select a red portion of your image. You have the Tolerance set to 5. This means that the Magic Wand is only going to select colors that are really close to red.
Make that a higher number, such as 20, you are going to start picking up lighter reds, pinks and quite possibly some oranges.
The Edge Softness setting is going to determine how smoothly the color change blends in with the rest of the selection. Let's experiment.
You should still have your Tolerance set to 10 and the Edge Softness to 1 from the previous step. If not, please make those adjustments now, then click once on the blanket.
Notice that it did not cover all of the red parts of the blanket? If you look really close, you can see where the pink meets the edges of the blanket, it is a little choppy looking as well. No problem! We can fix that in a jiffy!
Now with our partially pink and red blanket we need to figure out how to make the entire blanket change color. There are a couple ways you could go about this. One is the same method that you would use with the Color Replacer tool had you not liked the outcome. Ctrl-Z to undo what you did; this would remove the pink and we basically would have a clean slate to start with. From there we could reset the tolerance to a higher number and try again.
Repeating this process until we achieved our final goal- thus being a pink blanket instead of a red one. That sure is a lot of clicking, undoing and keyboard shortcutting huh?
Corel's new Color Changer tool has simplified things for you so you don't have to go through that process over and over again to achieve the perfect results. Humor me just this once, though, and undo the change you just made. Change the Tolerance setting to 13, then bump the Edge Setting up a notch to 2. Click once on the blanket. The majority of the blanket should now be pink, as shown here.
By setting the Tolerance to a higher number you have allowed Paint Shop Photo Pro to replace a wider range of red color. You might need to zoom in on the edges, but you will also notice that the edges are a bit smoother than they previously were.
Place your image next to your Tool Options palette where ever it might reside in your workspace. Place it close to the Tolerance and Edge Softness settings so that it is easily visible for you.
Using the numerical entry box for the Tolerance setting. Slowly increase the number from 13 to 14, 15 and so forth. Be sure to keep an eye on the blanket each time you click! How high can you go? Don't go too high or you might turn something else pink that you hadn't intended to!
Be sure to try increasing the Edge Softness as well as you move along.
Much easier than having to undo and redo all the time, isn't it? Let us know how you did! I have a couple examples above showing various settings if you would like to see where I ended up!
My final numbers were 18 for Tolerance and 10 for Edge Softness producing the results you see here.
Tips for making the most of this Tool
- For problem images which contain large amounts of the same color throughout the entire image that are the same color as the color you are electing to change, use one of your selection tools to isolate the area. Then the Color Changer tool will only change the respective color within the selection and no where else in the image.
- Another method would be to duplicate the layer, apply the Color Changer tool, and then mask out the rest of the image to reveal the original image below.
- Only use Color Changer on matte elements such as carpet, clothing and painted objects.