Can’t pick house colors? Photoshop to the rescue.
Our neighbors painted their house yellow and are having trouble finding good accent colors. Besides going with the yellow, the accent color(s) can’t make the house look too much like the orangish one across the street. (We have a colorful neighborhood.) Anyway, I offered my budding photoshop skills. I basically selected like-color chunks of the original photo that I wanted to color change using the magic lasso and the magnetic selector. I then copied that chunk to a new layer. Finally I dupicated each of those layers and changed the color as desired. This enabled me to switch on and off various colors, allowing me to try different color combinations. Below you can see the original photo and 3 of the 8 variations I’ve made. If you have any ideas, feel free to send them my way.
|
Original photo |
|
Brown trim and stairs |
|
Olive trim and graphite stairs |
|
Yellow trim with olive highlights and graphite stairs |
Of course these are merely mockups. So mileage will vary.
March 30th, 2005 at 7:38 am
I have photoshop, but haven’t used it much since I was happy with the graphics program that I knew inside out….. But, it capabilites are not in the class of what you have produced….. So-o-o, I’m going to try and “teach an old dog new tricks” and start using it….. Mind you, I might be calling on you for help (The price you have to pay for being a computer smart-ass)……
Oh, yeah, as for your pics, it looks as if your nieghborhood has gone Jamaician, Mon… The original is way too bright!…. I like either one of the last two as they don’t reach out grab you off the street…… Another way they could go without totally repainting the trim is with a thin darker brown “wash” over the “loud” reddish, brownish, whatever that color is that is now on the trim….. This would subdue the brillance and give an “aged” look at the same time although I think they should go with the Olive trim with graphite stairs…
Just a thought……
March 31st, 2005 at 10:05 am
A couple good Photoshop books if you’re interested in learning it…
“The Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers” by Scott Kelby. This is more of a task-oriented book, teaching things like “here’s how to fix your picture if you forgot to use fill flash” or “here’s how to fix red-eye” or “expert photo sharpening”. So you can just flip to the section you want and accomplish the task without reading the entire book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735714118/qid=1112285098/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7168111-2082268?v=glance&s=books
“Adobe Photoshop CS Classroom in a Book.” This book is more of an instruction manual on how to use the various tools in Photoshop. For example, here’s how to use all the different Select tools, here’s how to use patterns, layers, adjustment layers, etc. It includes a CD with sample photos that you use to work through the various lessons.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/032119375X/qid=1112285223/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-7168111-2082268?v=glance&s=books
March 31st, 2005 at 7:55 pm
Thanx for the info on the books – I will check them out……