“This technique is great for commercial photography retouching. It can be used for product photography, automotive retouching as well as commercial portraiture.”
In this tutorial/video, I will show a Photoshop retouching technique that allows you to change a color in an image to a realistic black or white conversion within minutes. This technique retains all of the detail from the previous color, with little to no masking required.
This technique is great for commercial photography retouching. It can be used for product photography, automotive retouching as well as commercial portraiture. A great example of practical uses for this technique: Let's say you shoot images of a product line for a catalogue. Let's say there are 5 identical products, the only difference is the color. Sure, you can shoot all 5 products, line every shot up to make them look identically shot, or you can use the same shot and convert the colors in Photoshop. With some simple adjustment layers you can knock this out in no time, and all of the shots will look identical, whether they are on an e-commerce page, or inside of a printed catalogue.
Also, while we are only focusing on a black and white conversion in this tutorial, keep an open mind and play around with the Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, the Selective Color Adjustment Layer as well. You can create other realistic color conversions with these as well.
Please note, that when using the technique with portraits, minor masking may be required. In the first example, we are turning the red dress into black dress and then into white white dress. Since this color conversion technique requires the primary use of the red slider in the black and white adjustment layer, you will see skin tone change as well. Simply mask it out. If you using this technique on a portrait and you want to convert a color such as blue, you more than likely will not have to mask anything out. Because skin tones will be independent of the blue slider (the skin tones are in the red and yellow slider).
Lastly, this technique is a great starting point to adding additional color to your image. Let's say that I wanted to make the dress a dark purple. I can use this technique and convert the dress to black, then add a purple Solid Color Adjustment Layer on top, add a clipping mask so it only effect the black conversion, and change the blend mode of the Solid Color Adjustment Layer to Color. This would create a realistic purple dress (using the right purple of course; in this case a dark purple would be best)
Hopefully this technique helps you the next time you're in a pinch. If you like this tutorial and would like to see more, please leave a comment below, and subscribe to my youtube channel http://goo.gl/M2VOM2. If I get enough interest, I will be more than happy to produce more tutorials in the future.
Thanks everyone!
