Using Color Replacement Tools in Photoshop

Color Replacement Tools:

Sometimes you want to replace certain colors in an image. With the Color Replacement tool – you can specify which colors you’d like to change and Photoshop will automatically replace them for you. This tutorial goes through the color replacement process and discusses all the things you need to know about the Color Replacement tool.

You may be wondering what on earth a tool for erasing backgrounds has to do with a tool for changing colors, and the answer is, a lot! Both of these tools use the exact same technology for detecting the pixels in the image that need to be changed. The only difference is that one of them deletes pixels entirely, the other simply changes their color.

The Color Replacement Tool is not the most professional way to change colors in an image and won't always give you the results you need, but it usually works well for simple tasks and it's such an easy tool to use that it's worth giving it a try before moving on to more advanced and time consuming methods.

The Color Replacement Tool was first introduced in Photoshop CS, and if you're using Photoshop CS or CS2, you'll find the Color Replacement Tool from the Tool Box (It shares a fly-out menu with the Brush and Pencil tools).

If you select the tool in the Toolbox, you'll get to see the various options in the Options bar like different Modes to work with in which the Replace Color Tool can be applied: Hue, Saturation, Color and Luminosity. The Hue will apply the replacement in the most subtle way, while the Color mode might result is a far too vibrant effect.

The primary purpose of this tool is to give you a quick way to change the entire color scheme of your site. While this can be done manually, the display of each color saves a lot of steps.

Before Using Replace Color Tool

After Using Replace Color Tool