Digital Scrapbooking Tips

Valentine’s day is just a few days away – a day for celebrating perfect matches.  If you have Photoshop (full version), you don’t have to wait to celebrate a perfect match!  It’s just a few clicks away and that’s something we can all fall in love with!

There are a number of ways to recolor images in Photoshop. I like to use this method when I want to use a piece of patterned paper on a project, but I need to recolor it to work with my color scheme.

Open two documents in Photoshop:  the image you want to change (we’ll call this the target) and the image that has the colors you’d like to match (we’ll call this the source.)

Select the target image (the one you want to change) and choose Image > Adjustments > Match Color from the Menu.  This opens the Match Color dialog box where you’ll be able to tweak the color.

Since you have selected the image you want to change, the Target information at the top of the dialog box will be filled in for you.

Under Image Statistics, choose the source (the image with the colors you want.)  This will be the other open image name. 

If your target has more than one layer, indicate which layer in the Layer drop-down menu.

Click the Preview button at the top right corner to see the results.

Adjust the Luminance, Color Intensity and Fade sliders to your liking and click OK.

You can match two layers in the same layered file by making the source document the same as the target document, while choosing different layers.  You can also make a selection on one or both of the layers to create a color match.

The Color Match function is a powerful tool worth exploring and adding to your digital arsenal.