Change colour in Photoshop with Gradient Maps

As the saying goes “A leopard can’t change his spots, nor a zebra its stripes”. But there are lots of ways to change colour in Photoshop, and one of the most effective is through the use of Gradient Maps.

Not only does this give you the option to remap colours in any way you choose, it also allows you to choose different shades at any time. Here’s how to use them.

01 Add Gradient Map
Open your ‘before’ image – in our case it’s this image of a zebra – and hit D to reset your colours to black and white. Click the Create Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers Panel and choose Gradient Map.

Next, click the gradient preview in the Adjustments Panel to enter the Gradient Editor.

02 Remap the colours
Choose the first preset in the list ‘foreground to background’, then double-click on the white block to the lower right of the black to white gradient preview. Choose a deep red colour then hit OK to apply.

03 Add blue and yellow
Hide the red layer then add a further two more Gradient Map Adjustment Layers in the same way, choosing blue and yellow tones. Now double-click the layer name of each and rename them after their colours.

04 Invert the masks
Reveal all the layers then click on the mask thumbnail of each of the Gradient Map layers and hit Cmd/Ctrl+I to invert it. This fills the mask with black, hiding the colour change. We’re now ready to paint back in the colours.

05 Reveal the red
Click on the red layer’s mask, then grab the Brush tool and choose a soft-edged circular brush tip. Set your foreground colour to white, then paint over one of the stripes to reveal the red. Continue painting over every third stripe.

06 Paint the rest
Paint with white on the other two masks to reveal the other colours. If you go wrong, hit X to flip your colour to black and  paint to hide the colour. If you want to tweak colours at any time, double-click the layer thumbnail and adjust the gradient.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 3rd, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.