A new Junior Member to the Photoshop 911 forums sent samples and asked...
How was this color changed? Does anyone know how to change the color like these photos?
I could spend about 20 pages here describing and stepping through a Curves tutorial to accomplish this task. But I won't. One of the seldom mentioned tools in Photoshop and Elements is the Gradient Map. This tool can do many things -- one of which is accomplish this reader's goals...
As you can see, these examples were toned down, or "tinted" as we called it in the old days. The technique de-saturates color until the image is almost grayscale. Rather than desaturating using the Hue/Saturation functions, the Gradient Map has a much softer hand, and I think does a better job.
Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map...
You can simply hit 'okay' to dismiss the opening dialog, or play with the settings. The Mode should be set to normal, so if the image looks like a negative, then reset that pull-down. Leave it set to 100% and do nothing else.
Now, use the Opacity slider to adjust the effect of the Map. At 100% the image will be grayscale. I have found this to be the best method of converting color photos to grayscale for newsletters and other print projects that use a PDF to print to a Duotech or other "rapid" on-demand printing process.
Here's the final compare. I've also posted another comparison just to show flesh tones in a natural "green" setting... which looks almost like an old fashioned hand color tint photo. (Open the other example.)
Use this tool when the occasion arises where the complexity of Curves is overkill! Thanks for reading
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from the Editor:
I was delighted that day back in 1989 when Peggy Killburn called to ask if I could handle one more speaker in my "Great Graphics Tips & Tricks" session scheduled for the 1990 Macworld Expo. "Yes" was my response to her request to add Russell Brown to my panel. After all, we loved Adobe's young "Illustrator" program, and were quite anxious to try out their upcoming new product called "Photoshop." After seeing his demo, I was convinced Photoshop would be big. So the next month we added "Photoshop Tips & Tricks" to our regular DTG Magazine uploads to Compuserve, GEnie and AOL. The rest is history.
I only regret that I didn't trademark the name.