Changing greys to colors?

[TristanArtForm]

OK, I do a lot of drawing layers, in various grey tones to model the image. Often this is done over a pencil drawing I scan in to slowly transition the art to a photoshoped drawing sans pencil marks.

These are done in diferent layers. Is there a way to selectively change this or that layer from grey to a different color? Can selected brush strokes be changed from one color to annother?

Any help appreciated, but please be aware, I am a Photoshop Newbie more or less.

Tristan

[Noë]

when you turn the mode into RGB, you can adjust the colours by using colour balance or hue/saturation :)
I hope that helps a bit.

love
Marleen

[TristanArtForm]

Hmmm... I am working in RGB.

what I would like to be able to do is change a brushstroke (or drawn line, or scanned in pencil art) from it's original color to something else. For example, it would be nice to be able to transform the grey #2 pencil drawing I scanned in to look as though it were drawn with a blue or red pencil. Or to change a transparant pinkish layer done in photoshop in to a geenish one.

Is there a way to do that?

T

[Elwell]

Select the layer you want to modify, go to image>adjustments>hue/saturation. Play around with the sliders for different effects.
In your example of changing a graphite drawiing to look like it was done with a colored pencil you would want to check the "colorize" box.
If you only want to modify some of the colors on a layer you can use the drop down menu to select only reds, yellows, etc, and use the eyedropper tools to further refine which colors are effected.

[Noë]

I always do that by using colour balance..
when you want to change the colours of a scanned pencil drawing into blue for example, you just turn the cyan and blue to max, and then they're blue..

love
Marleen

[CaneHoyer]

There are several ways to get where you wanna be!

If you have a black and white image without an active selection, then the whole image will be affected, if you use a color or gradation correction on a layer.

You can use all tools in the picture adjustment.

The gradation tool is one of the best controlable ones, and maybe the mostly used in DTP color correction.
Also nice is the channel mixer, which is best used to recolor a complete part of a picture as it keeps the flow from light to darkness.

The PS color correction tool is not really good.
Profi DTP studios use special plugins, like Coco, which to my opinion is the best of all, but really expensive.
So I would only use the PS color correction, to adjust minimal corrections.

For example if you like to color a greyscale look like blue lines, use gradation tool.
Reduce Green and Blue, and maybe increase the Red Channel.

You can affect every channel by light, midtone and depth that's very comfortable and you will allways have a control over what you do!

Keep in mind that RGB is an additive color mode, that means the function is a bit weird.

In reality Red Green and Blue together is white, its the colors of the light, so what you see on screen as blue, or exactly sayed cyan, is in RGB mode the Red Channel (always the complementary color!).

To get deeper in this theme get you an instruction about chromatics.

Using PS is always a big plus to know, how different color spaces are to handle, as they are completely different in their buildup, as there are the main color workspaces: RGB, LAB, CMYK.

[TristanArtForm]

Thanks a lot guys. A great help and much appreciated.
Learning new techniques by leaps and bounds.

T

[jfrancis]

For the kind of brushstroke-specific control you want, you may need the brushstroke to be on its own layer.

related -

Here is a great example of black-and-white to color painting in action:
http://www.androidblues.com/JealousyStepbystep/jealousystep.html

Here is a method for colorizing black and white line art - read the comments to see an even better method described
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2004/10/colorize_black.html

[nofingers]

Another way to color a finished grayscale painting would be to set the painting layer to luminosity, then create a normal blank layer underneath. You can paint in areas of color on the lower layer, and it will change the hue of the top layer, but all of the value stays the same.