Here’s a technical tip for your Tuesday morning…
I was using one of the pages from the Easy Scraps Baby Boy Digital Kit, but decided I wanted a different color scheme than the original page. This is pretty easy to do using a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, and it doesn’t permanently alter your picture!
The original color sheme was brown and blue, but I wanted to tweak those colors. I opened the file (Arrive No Title) containing the page in Photoshop (I believe Photoshop Elements will have something similar). First I saved the image as a copy so that the original remained untouched. Then I chose Layer-> New Adjustment Later-> Hue/Saturation. This creates a new layerabove the original. This layer will change the colors and/or saturation and/or the brightness of the colors of the layers beneath it.
Then I changed the Hue in the adjustment layer’s panel, finally arriving at the number -160. Notice that in the pull-down, I chose the default of Master, meaning all colors in the image will be affected.
This was the result when I chose to use Master and change the Hue…
See the difference then, if instead of using Master, I chose to alter just the Blue’s in the image, by choosing blue in the pull down…
If I bring in an additional photo, and layer it beneath the Adjustment layer and the page, the Hue/Saturation adjustment will alter that photo as well.
We can correct this, by “clipping” or “attaching” the adjustment layer to the frame layer avoiding the layers below. Make sure that the adjustment layer is directly above the Frame layer, and that the photo is below both of those. Now hold down Alt on a PC or Option on a MAC and click the line between the Adjustment Layer and the Layer with the Easy Scraps page. These adjustment layer will be “clipped” to the layer directly below it, and will only affect that layer. Any layers further below will remain unaltered.
Here is what the layers palette looks like with the Adjustment layer not “clipped”…
Here is what the layers palette looks like with the Adjustment layer “clipped” to the frame layer…
And here are the results…
I decided I liked the image better the first way- with the Hue/Saturation applied to all the color channels.
From there I tweaked the image a bit more. In fact, I added another Hue/Saturation Adjustment layer to get the blue a bit more towards the navy end of the spectrum. Because the first Adjustment layer was “clipped” to the frame layer, the rest of the layers below are still “masked” or shielded from the new Adjustment layer as well.
And here is the final result….
So don’t let the colors of a digital image stop you from using it! This is a great way to use your digital kits so you get more mileage out of them!! Enjoy!
