Participant

Question

How do I change the color black

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
December 21, 2011
7 replies
209319 views

I will preface this by saying I am new to Photoshop.

The Problem? I have a family logo on a solid black background. This is not a photograph. I want to change the solid black background to a custom green color. This sounds simple enough, but I cannot get Photoshop to change the black to green for me. Here is what i have tried so far.

1. My file is a 16-bit RGB TIF file. I have saved the file as a RAW file and a PSD file and neither of these work. So I assume the problem is not the TIF format.

2. I have tried this.

Image -> Adjustments -> change color.

I can use the eyedropper to select the black (in the background) and the preview shows the black selected.

However, when I move the HUE slider below, the color stays black. It does not change color.

If I type in the Hue Saturation and Lightness numbers for my color, the background will change, but it changes to gray, not my color.

3. I have tried this

I set my background to the color I want. (A custom color I created, of R:34 G: 139 B:34)

I click on BrushTool -> Color Replacement Tool

Settings on the horizontal tool bar are

Mode: color Sampling: Once Limits: Contiguous Tolerance: 5%

I then click on the black background, but it stays black. It does not change to the color I specified.

(I have also tried Discontiguous, different modes, different sampling, etc. Nothing works).

I will note that if I set my background to blue (R:0 G:0 B:255), then the Color Replacement Tool works.

It will change the black background to the basic blue color.

It just will not work for the custom green color that I created.

It also will not work for most of the other default colors in PHotoshop.

This is probably trivial for some of you, but I have spent a couple hours listening to tutorials on youtube and trying various things, and I am stuck. Would appreciate your wisdom.

How to

This topic has been closed for replies.

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edgrimley

Participating Frequently

One of my favorite adjustment layers which is seldom mentioned is selective color. Select black from the drop down and change it as you wish.

C

Chubbo

Participant

@edgrimleyyou replied to an almost 10 year old post, but I wanted to thank you, because I had never noticed the selective color adjustment layer and it is exactly what I needed.

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edgrimley

Participating Frequently

You are certainly welcome, I'm glad you found it useful.

A

Anonymous

Make sure the layer isn't locked, then...
Image > Adjustments > Selective Colour
Select black
Adjust

B

beckyd1779

Participant

Excellent - thank you. However, when I did this I ended up with darker smudges/shadows in parts of the photo. Not sure what caused this??

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PrairieBadgerAuthor

Participant

I would like to thank everyone for their kind suggestiosn and insights. I will try your suggestions as learning exercises, since I am still very wet behind the ears on all this stuff and the more I can learn and know, the better.

Good news is that I was able to get my background to change from black to the green color that I wanted. I utilized a two-step process that dawned on me after I responded to Curt Y's first post. Realizing that I was able to change the black background to a blue on an earlier try (though it would not respond to my attempts to turn in to the green I wanted), I thought it might work to change the color twice - first to a color it would accept, and then from that color to the green i wanted. This process worked. I probably would not have thought of this without the comment from Curt Y, who got me thinking outside my box.

Thanks again ... and I will try your suggestions because they will teach me new things and some of them are likely simpler than what I did.

Jeff Arola

Community Expert

Another way if the background is just solid black, is to make a selection of the logo (or select the black and make the color fill layer without inversing the selection), inverse the selection (Select>Inverse), then make a Color Fill adjustment layer and set the color to your green.

If you need to refine the area of where the color is just paint on the color fill's layer mask.

davidc1815

Legend

Image>Adjustments>Selective Color - choose 'Blacks' from the drop down list, then juggle with the four (including Black) colour sliders till you get the colour you want.

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PrairieBadgerAuthor

Participant

Tried this with white. The white did not change color. Maybe I am doign something wrong.

HarrieB

Inspiring

Tried this with white. The white did not change color. Maybe I am doign something wrong.

Got your message by e-mail. Not sure however if it was ment for me or was a response to some other participant of the forum...

HarrieB

Inspiring

Isn't it possible to select the solid black (Magic Wand tool, with a Tolerance of 1) and fill the selection with the desired color?

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richy_w_dundee

Participant

Simple to do and it works! thanks

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Anonymous

What you have tried is because black is technically not a color, it is absence of all color.

There are a couple of ways to change black to a color, first you have to trick Adobe.

Click on Image/adjustment/hue-saturation and then click on "colorize" box in lower right corner. That will get you started.

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PrairieBadgerAuthor

Participant

Hi Curt. Thanks for your response. I suspected that black might be considered a non-color by Photoshop, but I did not know for sure. Plus I did not know how to make black a "color". I will try what you say. Hopefully that will do it.

A

Anonymous

Forgot to mention to make selection of black object first. Then to hue colorize.

Here is a video of a similar technique. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96cFn9S4YF8

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