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nick263896892ojz
Participant
May 23, 2026 6:03 PM UTC
Question

Match Color color noise

Don’t understand why photoshop creates strange color noise when colorizing a B&W photo.  The attached sample should not happen as pure colors should not be generated but wondering if there is an easy way to get rid of them?  Tried “Color Range” but it not great.

    4 replies

    c.pfaffenbichler
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 29, 2026 2:37 PM UTC

    There are techniques to alleviate color noise (like using a filtered Smart Object copy set to Blend Mode »Color«), but please provide the additional information ​@Brad @ Roaring Mouse has asked for. 

     

    In my opinion Photoshop’s »Match Color« is worthless because it is destructive – which is not to deny that it may serve you perfectly well (except in this case apparently). 

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    Brad @ Roaring Mouse
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 25, 2026 1:20 AM UTC

    How exactly are you doing this? i.e. what steps are you using to colorize?

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    nick263896892ojz
    Participant
    May 25, 2026 2:39 AM UTC

    Adjustments/Match Color.  Have seen it many times before and there are videos on Youtube about it.

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    Brad @ Roaring Mouse
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    May 27, 2026 3:40 AM UTC

    Matching to what?  Can you show both? What do you want the image to look like?

    If you are trying to “colorize” a a grayscale image using a full color image as reference, that is not going to work the way you think. Match Color looks at the entire color table in an image and shifts it to match the color table of another. I think what you want to do is entirely different

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