How to change color of clothes in Photoshop | Photoshop CS5
It sometimes gets quite messy and time-consuming for a photographer, to take pictures of the same type of cloth which has different colors.
It can also become a double expenditure for a business to pay extra for taking pictures of the same cloth with different colors.
So how can a business and a photographer save money and time at the same time right?
The answer is easy. You can easily change the color of clothes or hair using photoshop in less than a minute. There are some professional photo editing services available online who can also do it at a lower cost for you.
Still, doing it yourself can also help you to save expense and time at the same time.
So, in this article, I’ll show you the way by which you can change the color of any cloth using Photoshop CS5. That too in a minute.
Open the Photo
The first thing you have to do is opening the photo in Photoshop. This is not at all a tough task to do. You actually have 2 options to open the image in Photoshop. Both are quite quick and easy to do. Either you can go to File>Open and select the file from the windows and click ‘Ok’, or drag the picture from windows to the Photoshop bar. When you drag the picture in Photoshop, the photo will automatically be opened in Photoshop. Your images will be imported in seconds if you go for dragging. Still, you can select any of the options. The choice is yours.
Taking the Background Layer
Whenever you are working in Photoshop, remember that you need to work taking the background layer. After opening the image, a background layer automatically get created. It is your wish if you want to take another background layer or not. Different layers work differently. I prefer copying the background layer into a new layer would be helpful for perfect editing. It will help you to keep your actual image safe.
Since we are going to change the color of the dress, we need to do clipping path at first. For drawing clipping path, we need path layer. Go to the top right side and click on ‘Path’ on the layer panel. Go down and click on the square shape icon to take a path layer. The path layer is named as ‘path 1’. We are going to draw a clipping path in this layer.
Selection of the Tool for Clipping Path
There are plenty of the tools in Photoshop by which you can draw lines for removing the background. The pen tool, magic wand tool, lasso tool, eraser tool are the few of them. The most used and efficient tool for drawing clipping path and to remove background is ‘The Pen Tool’. Almost every professional editor who works for removing background uses the pen tool of Photoshop. So we are going to select the pen tool for drawing the clipping path of the dress. To select ‘pen tool’, you can just press ‘p’ on the keyboard which will automatically activate the pen tool in Photoshop. This is an automatic way.
The manual way of activating the pen tool is, clicking on the pen icon from the toolbar.
My personal favorite is the pen tool. I like working with pen tool while doing clipping path work. The pen tool is not restricted and is flexible. That is the reason we have selected the pen tool here to draw a clipping path.
Make Clipping Path of the Dress
While working on clipping path, you have to be much focused. Because you have to put so many anchors in so many places that you may not notice that some areas are cutting down or some unnecessary areas are coming. A perfect clipping path completely depends on your focus and skill.
After activating the pen tool, we have to work on the dress and draw a clipping path. Since the dress is curvy, we went slowly on the dress and we set the anchor points we needed. When you see a curvy thing, press ‘alt’ and break the anchor. Shift the anchor towards the place where the subject’s shape goes. We have made the clipping path exactly of the dress’s shape. But do not take extra and unwanted areas of the picture. Just draw the path around the subject like we drew the clipping mask around the dress only.
Quick Selection of ‘Path 1’
After closing up drawing the clipping mask of the dress, it needs to do quick selection of that particular part. Quick selection of the path or making the selection takes some seconds to do.
Before quick selection, make sure that the path is closed rightly and you have done it perfectly. To make the selection, press ‘Ctrl’ and click on ‘path 1’ at the same time. The moving dots around the selected areas it shows after pressing ‘Ctrl’ and clicking on ‘path 1’ makes sure that the path is selected successfully.
Check and recheck the path again and again doing quick selection. It gives you clarity if you have left any important part behind or you are taking some unwanted areas.
Open a new layer for color correction
So from here we’ll start the color changing process. For that purpose, the first thing we need is a new layer. In this layer we’ll choose the color that we want to give to our dress.
To open a layer we just need to go to the layer section and from there we’ll click on the square box in the bottom. This will open a new layer on the layer section.
Choose the Solid color adjustment
Now comes the fun part, choosing the solid color from the adjustment layer. Now, you’ll have to create a new adjustment layer over the new layer. This would be the solid color adjustment layer. This layer will help you to choose the color you want to give to the dress.
For creating this layer, you just have to select the new transparent layer, then go to the adjustment layer option that is below the layer section. Then simply choose the Solid color option from the list.
Choose the desired color for your dress
After you have clicked the solid color layer, a new box will pop up on the screen. That will be the color selection box. From there you can select the color you want, for the dress.
There are two ways by which you can select the color. You can either type a color code in the code box or you can select the color from the color box using mouse. After choosing the color simply hit OK and then you will find a solid color on the dress.
Change the blending mode
What you have now is a dress with a solid color on it but it doesn’t show the structure or patterns within the dress right? You can get that original look easily but for that you just have to change the blend.
For changing the blend of that solid color layer, you will have to select that layer. Then, go to the blending mode option on the top left of the layer section. Then select the overlay option from the list of blending options. You will finally get the dress color you want. Which will also look original.
Final color change of the dress
After all the clipping, choosing color and changing the blending modes you will finally get your perfect image. And your image will look like this.
Conclusion
Using Photoshop CS5 is easy if you can just be confident enough. Changing colors using the tips I provided will make it a lot easier for you. There are lots of different photoshop related Youtube channels that can also help you to learn to change the colors of dress. Therefore, you can also save time and money if you can use Photoshop.
