Re-colouring a Flower in Photoshop

Hello everyone!

I am happy to  [ try ] to show you a couple of techniques on how to re-colour your flower stash! Remember there are OODLES of ways of re-colouring in photoshop – I’m trying to show you an interesting alternative:)

So, let’s not waste anytime! Here we go…

Now I did this tutorial in PS CS5. It should be similar in your PS / PSE.

1. Open the flower you would like to re-colour in Photoshop

2. Create a layer above the flower. Right click on this new layer and select ‘create clipping mask’. See below

3. On this new layer we are going to take a grungy brush .. if you don’t have , click here to get a little brush sample of mine.

To activate your brush tool, type the letter ‘b’.  You can then go to the brush menu to select your brush.

– note, if you don’t know how to load a brush file, click on the down arrow to make the brush menu popup. Then click on the right pointing arrow to show the menu. Select Load Brushes… . Then browse to where the abr file is, and click load. If it asks you if you want to replace, you can do that, but any other brushes (including ones you made that are not yet saved) will be gone from the menu. If you append the brush set, it will add them to the existing brushes in your loaded library.

4. Go ahead and make your foreground colour what you like.. I made mine a blueish colour. Go ahead and paint around the edges of the flower. Notice since we are painting on the clipped layer, that the paint strokes are only applied within (or technically clipped to) the flower. See the image below.

5. Now for the fun part. Photoshop is really a playground for experimentation. So this is the time to play with your layer blending options. With the clipped layer selected, go to the blending mode drop down and start playing with it until you get a result you like. Here are some of my examples:

MULTIPLY | FILL 70%

SCREEN | OPACITY 50%

OVERLAY | FILL 100%

I’m going to use this last setting of overlay at 100% opacity.

The grungy brush layer on the edge of the flower makes for a pretty cool look!

6. Now let’s play with the center of this flower a little. I will show you a technique of making a selection and feathering it. Then we will create an adjustment layer to play with the colour:)

Type the letter ‘l’ to make your lasso tool active (polygonal lasso tool works fine too). Make a rough selection around the center lighter part of the flower. When you see those marching ants you are on the right track.

7. Now if you look at the top near the menu bar you should see a button that says ‘Refine Edge’. Click that button while the marching ants are still dancing . If you don’t see that button, do an alt + ctrl + r or Select -> Refine Edge

8. This Refine Edge box may look different if you are not using CS5. No worries.. the setting we need to change is something you have too.

Slide your feather knob to the right until it’s blurry like it is below. As to how blurry you want it is up to you

, we just don’t want a hard edge or the colour difference in the flower won’t look very natural. Click ok, so you still see your marching ants.

9. Make sure your layer with the flower on it is the active layer (it will likely be highlighted blue) . Now go to the menu Layer – > New Adjustment Layers – > Selective Color. Since the center of the flower is closer to a yellowish colour, I will select ‘Yellows’ from the colors menu as seen below.

Now experimentation time! play with the sliders until you find something you like. Relative or Absolute adjustments are really just an issue of taste.  My example below is a rather muted colour as you see from my sliding levels.

And there you have it, my finished colour adjusted flower. There are SO many ways to adjust and re-colour elements.. this is simply 1 technique I am showing you:)

Please enjoy this freebie I created based on this tutorial, both PU & CU friendly.

Cheers

xo Jaimee