There are so many techniques in Photoshop that we can use to enhance or alter our photos. In this tutorial, we’re going to show you how to change colours in Photoshop using adjustment layers and hue/saturation levels.
By using adjustment layers in Photoshop, we can change colours as much or as little as we want – so you can create a wildly different effect to your original photo, or just a subtle change. It’s a really simple and fast technique which is also a super useful one to add to your skillset!
I’m going to be using Adobe Photoshop 2020, however, the steps in this tutorial should still work across other versions.
For the purpose of this exercise, I’m going to be changing the colour of my eyes. You can use this technique on anything at all, as long as you have a clear, defined subject on which you want to change the colour. Below, you can see my before and after photos where I have amended the eye colour, and at the end of this article, you can see the effect on a lotus flower.
Original photo:
Eye colour changed from green to blue:
As you can see, the changes which I’ve made are quite subtle, but there’s no limit on how dramatic you can be with your colours!
So, to begin, you’ll need a photo to work on. I’ve chosen an image from Pixabay where we can clearly see the person’s eyes.
Tip: Pixabay is a really great website where you can find almost any image you want, and all photos on the site are free to use.
Our first step is to upload the image we want to work on, into Photoshop. You can do this by going to file, opening, and then going to your saved photo.
Once your picture is in Photoshop, you’ll see that it’s on a layer named background.
I’m going to work on changing the colour of your eyes in this tutorial, however, you can use any picture you want. Depending on what your focal point is and how big it is on the canvas, you may want to zoom in.
You can zoom in by using the zoom tool on the left-hand toolbar. You can also use ctrl/command and +, or ctrl/command and – to zoom out.
For a handy guide on all of Photoshop’s commands, click here.
Now, we need to select the parts of the image in which we want to adjust the colour. To do this, we’ll use the Lasso Tool. This should be the third icon down on the left-hand toolbar.
Use the Lasso Tool to draw around the edges of your eye (or shape, if using a different image). It doesn’t have to be exact, as we can tidy it up later.
If you are changing eye colour, we’ll need to use the Lasso Tool again to select the other eye. As this means two separate selections, hold down your shift key with the first eye selected, and then draw around the second eye.
Both eyes should now be selected, and this step is not applicable if you’re using only one focal point.
As we have our selections made, we now need to create the adjustment layer. To do this, click on the new adjustment layer icon, at the bottom of the Layers panel. This icon looks like a circle split in half.
Within the pop-up menu, select hue/saturation.
You’ll now see the colour properties panel appear. You can show or hide this by pressing the arrows to the right-hand side of it (>>).
Within the colour properties panel, select the tick box next to colourize.
When you tick this box, you should see your sections turn a different colour. As you can see below, the eyes in my photo have turned purple!
If you experiment with the hue slider, you can change the colour of your selection. You could, of course, use bright colours to create different effects, however, I’m going to opt for a more natural shade of blue.
If your chosen colour is a little too bright, use the saturation slider to dim it a little.
Now, we’re going to clean up our work. Depending on how accurate your initial selection was with the Lasso Tool, you may not have much to do in this step, or maybe nothing at all! But don’t worry if your selection wasn’t too accurate, we can tidy it up really easily.
In the layers panel, you’ll see a layer named Hue/Saturation. Click on the black box to ensure the adjustment layer is selected – when you do this you should see a white box appear around it.
In the drop-down menu above this, you’ll see that it is set to normal. This menu is the blend mode, this tells us which parts of the image are being altered. Change this to colour. You may not notice much difference, or perhaps only a subtle one, however, when the blend mode is changed from normal to colour, it tends to make our selection a little brighter.
Next, select the brush tool from the left-hand toolbar and choose a round brush. The brush size will depend on how large your work is. It’s recommended to start off with a smaller one and then adjust this up or down as you work.
We also need to select our foreground colour now, which should be set to black. You can either choose this in the colour panel or use the letter D on your keyboard, which is a shortcut to reset colours. This will change your foreground (the front box) to white, and the background (the one behind this) to black.
To toggle between black and white, use D and X on your keyboard as a shortcut. This is a lot quicker than manually selecting the colours.
If we use a black brush, this will change any of our selected areas back to being a part of the layer, meaning that we can use this to get rid of any areas which we may have over-selected at the beginning.
If you make a mistake and actually need to re-select an area, just toggle your brush to white and it’ll make it a part of the selection again.
Now, take some time to clean up your image and get rid of any over or under-selected areas using the black and white brush. If you have used an image of eyes, you also may want to use the black brush tool on the pupil to make sure that isn’t coloured too.
We’re all done! The changes in eye colour on my image are quite subtle, but as you’ve seen, you’re able to make some really dramatic colour changes with this technique too.
You’re also not limited to changing only eye colour, you can amend the colour of absolutely any element of a photo! In the below example, I’ve changed the original lotus flower which was pink, into a blue one.
Original photo:
The Colour of the flower changed to blue using adjustment layers:
This is a really useful technique that comes in handy for both artistic projects and simple photo enhancements where you may only need slight alterations, have fun and let us know what you come up with in the comments!
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