Photoshop Tips: Recoloring Elements

[1gr8muggle]

There are many approaches to recoloring elements, but here are a couple of simple ways.

Using the Fill Shortcut (for solid colored elements):

1. Place your image on its own layer.
2. Click the foreground color square on your tool palette to choose a new color.
3. Ctrl-Click (PC) or Cmd-Click (Mac) the thumbnail of the layer to make the element an active selection (marching ants around it).
4. Type Ctrl+Delete (PC) or Cmd+Delete (Mac) to fill the selection with your foreground color. (Use Alt or Option + Delete to fill with the background color.)
5. Type Ctrl+D (PC) or Cmd+D (Mac) to deselect.

Using the Paint Bucket Tool (for solid colored elements):

(This method is handy for recoloring just a word or letter in a quote element, for example, rather than recoloring an entire element.)

1. Place your image on its own layer.
2. Click the foreground color square on your tool palette to choose a new color.
3. Choose the Paint Bucket tool.
4. Click the part of your element you wish to recolor. This will only recolor any adjacent pixels of the same color.

Using the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Method (for textured elements):

1. Place your image on its own layer.
2. Click the foreground color square on your tool palette to choose a new color.
3. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation.
4. Check off the "Colorize" box in the Hue/Saturation dialog box.
5. Adjust the saturation slider to achieve your desired color. Try to avoid adjusting the Lightness slider, as it will cause you to lose any shading details in your element. Also, don't adjust the Hue slider, or it will no longer be adjusting things according to your foreground color.

Tips:

If using the Hue/Saturation method, you may choose to make a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer so that you don't alter the original element. To do this, click on your element layer then, at the bottom of the layers palette, choose the b&w circle icon>Hue/Saturation Adjustment. At this point follow the same steps as above. When you are finished, select the adjustment layer and go to Layer>Create Clipping Mask. This will allow you to change the hue at any point, without altering your original or affecting any layers beneath your element layer.

Note: if the element you wish to recolor is available in abr format (a brush), the simplest way to get the preferred color is to load it as a brush, and set your foreground color before stamping/brushing the image.

For a more in-depth study of recoloring, check out this tutorial in the store:

You can also check out this tutorial for recoloring tips:

[justmp]

So nice of you to share these tips, Cassie! I was a scrapper for quite awhile before I figured out how to recolor and now I utilize recoloring a LOT!

[mnorr1]

Thank-you for sharing Cassie... You do a good job of explaining steps in a clear and sequential way, as well, you add the whys, which I need... I need to see the forest in order to work on the tree... Nadica

[ldmeggy12]

Ok, so I have tried and tried all three of these tips on how to recolor and I can't get any of them to work. I am trying to recolor one of Katie's crystalized corners and it just won't work. Do I just need to create another fill layer and clip it to it or can I actually recolor?

[1gr8muggle]

Those crystalized corners are brushes. Just load them and select the color you want them to be before "stamping" them. That's the easiest way.