Questions about replacing colors and stuff

[rambomhtri]

OK, don't worry about or use the smart object, just use the noise filter.

You will have to tell me what you need help on.


Would you rather I made a video?

I'm totally fine with it, whatever is easier to you.

If you can upload a screen shot of the Full UI at the point of the error

Well, it's basically what I posted before:


That's the stronger orange I can get. The time I paste the orange code, the BG changes and the gamut warning appears. By the way, this kind of problems with the "Replace color..." tool has been bothering me since I started to use Photoshop.

Well, I use PS rarely, cause for now everything I've ever wanted to change in a picture I've accomplished it using Paint and may be some blur effect in PS. Sometimes the color I want to replace just don't gets replaced. For example, try in that very same picture to select the black from the jacket and make it a red jacket. You get some weird colors:


Clearly I don't have a clue about how this tool works. It does not simply replace a color you select by another you select. I don't know.

 

[MrToM]

LOL....thats great!

I didn't need all those but its good that you posted them.....a picture paints a thousand words...and I know what your problem is.

The reason I asked for a screenshot without any windows is because the UI is full of useful info that can indicate problems such as the one you have here.

Your first image was covering the info I needed so its fortunate that you posted the others....you'll see why...

Take a look at the Filename in the tab of the document...



...see that '#' symbol?

This indicates that there is a mis-match with 'Colour Profiles'.....and this is why you get that 'Gamut' warning.

An image can have a 'Colour Profile' embedded into it.
Photoshop also has a 'Working' Colour Profile.

If these two do not match, you get that symbol in the filename AND a warning if you try to use a colour that is not within the 'Working' profile of PS.

The most common profile to work in is Adobe RGB (1998).
You can set this from the menus...

EDIT > COLOR SETTINGS...




This profile has a wide range, or 'Gamut', of colours that should allow you to choose any colour you want.....from all 16.7 million of them.

Modern browsers and monitors use the sRGB colour profile and PS has the option to save your images with this profile as the 'embedded' profile....meaning that when viewed in a browser it will look the same....and as your monitor uses it too it will still look the same on the monitor.

Thats a very 'simplified' explanation but it should give you a head-start if you decide to read up on it further.

If you have any further problems with PS its always best to post a full UI screenshot with as little hidden as possible.....menu's are not really needed as they are the same for everyone but the file you are working on will obviously be unique.

For this reason its good to have as much info about it on display....not only for problem solving but for your own reference too.

The INFO panel can show lots of useful stuff, especially if you set the lower half to display info like this...



You can also change the Status bar to something more useful too....just in case the INFO panel is obscured...the filesize is not really important until you save your image....and even then, nowadays its not as important as it once was.




That may seem a lot to take in but its pretty simple stuff and you only have to set it up once.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[IamSam]

Here is video number one. I will work on the rest later.

 

[MrToM]

Nice vid so far Sam......1080 eh? I can see I need to up my game!

Roll on part 2!

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[rambomhtri]

Oh my god, why I didn't find this forum 2 years ago!

This is so epic, thank you very much for all the explanation, I'm working on it right now!

 

[rambomhtri]

OK, MrTom, I followed your steps, but the # icon did not disappeared. So I saved the picture in PNG, then opened it, and then the # was not there. But still, I did the exact same steps and the orange I got was a little bit stronger than the one I was getting, but still way too far from the f96000 I wanted.

What should I do?

 

[rambomhtri]

LOL....thats great!

I didn't need all those but its good that you posted them.....a picture paints a thousand words...and I know what your problem is.

The reason I asked for a screenshot without any windows is because the UI is full of useful info that can indicate problems such as the one you have here.

Your first image was covering the info I needed so its fortunate that you posted the others....you'll see why...

Take a look at the Filename in the tab of the document...

View attachment 56471

...see that '#' symbol?

This indicates that there is a mis-match with 'Colour Profiles'.....and this is why you get that 'Gamut' warning.

An image can have a 'Colour Profile' embedded into it.
Photoshop also has a 'Working' Colour Profile.

If these two do not match, you get that symbol in the filename AND a warning if you try to use a colour that is not within the 'Working' profile of PS.

The most common profile to work in is Adobe RGB (1998).
You can set this from the menus...

EDIT > COLOR SETTINGS...




This profile has a wide range, or 'Gamut', of colours that should allow you to choose any colour you want.....from all 16.7 million of them.

Modern browsers and monitors use the sRGB colour profile and PS has the option to save your images with this profile as the 'embedded' profile....meaning that when viewed in a browser it will look the same....and as your monitor uses it too it will still look the same on the monitor.

Thats a very 'simplified' explanation but it should give you a head-start if you decide to read up on it further.

If you have any further problems with PS its always best to post a full UI screenshot with as little hidden as possible.....menu's are not really needed as they are the same for everyone but the file you are working on will obviously be unique.

For this reason its good to have as much info about it on display....not only for problem solving but for your own reference too.

The INFO panel can show lots of useful stuff, especially if you set the lower half to display info like this...



You can also change the Status bar to something more useful too....just in case the INFO panel is obscured...the filesize is not really important until you save your image....and even then, nowadays its not as important as it once was.




That may seem a lot to take in but its pretty simple stuff and you only have to set it up once.

Regards.
MrToM.

OK, MrTom, I followed your steps, but the # icon did not disappeared. So I saved the picture in PNG, then opened it, and then the # was not there. But still, I did the exact same steps and the orange I got was just a little bit stronger than the one I was getting, but still way too far from the f96000 I wanted.

What should I do?

Another weird thing. I opened the new PNG with Paint, and the new BG orange was softer in paint, almost identical to the orange I was getting without doing the Adobe 1998 profile color change.
So, I did what you said, as the # icon didn't disappear, I saved the picture to PNG, then opened with Photoshop and replaced the BG color, I could get a little bit stronger orange, I saved this photo, I opened with paint, and the orange was softer in Paint. The orange was different if I opened the new PNG with Photoshop or with Paint.
:redface:

I feel my computer is possessed by a color demon, damn.

 

[MrToM]

Well the only thing I advised was to set PS to use the Adobe colour space.
The reason for this is that it is a wider space which includes both RGB and CMYK.

None of the images you have posted so far have an 'embedded' profile, and, as the screenshots you provided don't contain this information, (hence my prompt to show the INFO Panel), I'm guessing this is still the case.

Therefore, they will still show as a mis-match and you'll get the '#' symbol AND the profile of (untagged).....see your INFO panel.

You can 'assign' or 'convert' an image profile regardless of it having one already, see this link for a good explanation.

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1315593&seqNum=6

You can do either of these from the same menu, EDIT > Assign or EDIT > Convert

If you save your image via 'Save For Web...', (and you always should for web graphics), the dialog box defaults to saving with an sRGB profile.....there is a checkbox to turn this on or off....leave it on.

Using 'Save As...' saves the image with whatever profile it has.....so if it doesn't have one, as in your case, then it doesn't get one.....hence why it looks different in 'Paint'...it still has no profile.

Give the image a profile or save it via 'Save For Web...' with sRGB checked and you'll start to see things be a little more consistent across programs and browsers.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[IamSam]

Here is the second video. You will have to pause the video often and be sure to watch it in fullscreen.

 

[rambomhtri]

Here is the second video. You will have to pause the video often and be sure to watch it in fullscreen.

Wow, I can't do anything but smiling watching you doing all those tricks and stuff. It's superb. You look like a magician to me!

When I'm done, I'll post the result here. Thank you for making this possible to me!

PD: I must be doing something wrong, MrToM. I'll post a more detailed step by step message so you can see what am I misunderstanding. Thank you too!
You two guys rock so much!

 

[IamSam]

Not a problem for me, glad to help out. I needed to practice with my screen capture app, it's a newer version and I'm not that familiar with it. So everybody wins.

 

[MrToM]

...I must be doing something wrong, MrToM. I'll post a more detailed step by step message so you can see what am I misunderstanding...

No worries...

Its a tricky thing to get your head round, even in the simplest terms.

We can go through it in more detail when you're ready.

Regards.
MrToM.

 

[Tom Mann]

@OP - I don't think anyone has said this in so many words, but both the color replacement tool (aka, brush), as well as the "replace color" command are both very old and have real limitations. Just Google the issue and you'll see that lots of people have problems with them, eg. http://www.justskins.com/forums/using-the-color-replacement-28241.html#post82195. I haven't used either in years. IMHO, just forget about both of these approaches and use the method (methods?) suggested by Sam.

In contrast, issues of out-of-gamut colors, incorrect color space conversions / mismatches, etc. are almost always caused by user error, not by some failing of the software. Color management problems can be very intricate /complicated, but with sufficient care, they can almost always be understood, if not resolved. Fortunately, color management problems usually (...but not always), produce smaller color errors than introduced by the "replace tool" and "replace color" techniques.

Because of this, my recommendation is to do what MrToM suggested and keep everything in sRGB from start to finish, and deal with color management issues once you get all the major, more fundamental problems worked out and you are faced with a real need to use other color spaces (eg, an old school printer who only accepts CMYK files).

Just my $0.02,

Tom M

 

[rambomhtri]

So, if you go over a light area, you're going to wind up with a pale version of your source color

I think that this is what's happening. But again, I don't see why Photoshop can't just replace a color you select by another color you select, setting the fuzziness and stuff.

It has sense that light colors get replaced by light colors, but if a user don't want to preserve these lights and shadows of the original photo, the "Replace color..." tool should provide a real "replace this color by this color" solution.

OK, that kind of explains one of the problems.

But, what about the second one? Try to replace the black jacket color by a red one. You get some weird colors all over the picture. I still don't understand that. I've faced dozens of times this issue: I wanted to replace a white area or a black area of a picture, and never could with this tool. Even solid areas, where there was a pure black right there.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, Sam, I was working on the picture, but in the minute 3:20 of the first part, you painted black all the jacket, removing the original texture of it and its bends (next to the white T-shirt). Can I leave that as it is?

Thank you!

 

[IamSam]

OK, Sam, I was working on the picture, but in the minute 3:20 of the first part, you painted black all the jacket, removing the original texture of it and its bends (next to the white T-shirt). Can I leave that as it is?

Thank you!

Absolutely! You can alter the image anyway you desire.........I'm not sure why I painted them out anyway.

 

[rambomhtri]

Absolutely! You can alter the image anyway you desire.........I'm not sure why I painted them out anyway.

I'm making the letters. One quick question:

How do you know which font it was? And how do you know all the values you put fit the original letter?

And... is there a way to know exactly what font is being used in a picture? Something like a "Font analyzer tool"?

Thanks!

 

[Tom Mann]

And... is there a way to know exactly what font is being used in a picture? Something like a "Font analyzer tool"? ...

https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ usually gets you pretty close.

Tom M

 

[rambomhtri]

https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ usually gets you pretty close.

Tom M

Thanks, that's what I was looking for!

I'm finishing it, it's getting better and better!


PD: An advise (lol, I dare to give you an advise, kill me please ). When placing and fitting the letters using "Free Transform", if you zoom in enough to see actual pixels, you'll have more control over it and the letters will fit perfectly (actually, if you see actual pixels, you can't have more accuracy). If you do it in a "Fit size" view, when you zoom in, it's probably going to be some issues with the angles and fittings.
Wait, I think that as this picture is only 800x800, when you press ctrl+0 you see actual pixels in the Fit size view. But anyway, zooming in is always better when placing things.

I'm almost done!

 

[rambomhtri]

View attachment 56489

Holy cow, did I did this?

:naughty:

You are awesome, lol. This is so perfect, man, I love you!

Nevertheless, I'd like to improve the BG a little bit.

 

[IamSam]

I'm making the letters. One quick question:

How do you know which font it was?

I have worked with these fonts before so I knew they were already in Ps. But if I didn't know what they were, I would use 'What the Font'.

And how do you know all the values you put fit the original letter?

Well, When I placed them against the trace layer, I would have just played with their size until I got it fairly close.........however, since I had already created them in the first image I posted for you, I just used those values in the video. I cheated. Great question though!