PS CS5: Matching Colors from Image to Image?

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Oct 16, 2007
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I'm very new to Photoshop and am still struggling with a few specific things.

One of them is .... How do I match a color found in one image and apply it to another image? In other words, if I find an image with a beautiful blue sky (just the color I like), how do I match that exact color and apply it to the washed out blues in the sky in my image?

I'm not trying to copy the entire sky into my image - just trying to match that blue color into the sky in my image.

Thanks!
 
Joined
May 11, 2006
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Well, give up looking for a "beautiful blue sky" filter or some other two-click method of doing what you want, at least if you want it to look natural.

"WHAT!" you say. "I've spent all that money on CS-5 and it can't even figure out how to make a washed out sky blue?" ANSWER: Unfortunately, that's right.

Photoshop CS-5 is an amazing program, but changing skies is actually a very difficult thing to do right and in many cases will challenge even the most experienced Photoshop user. Selecting the sky accurately, so that you isolate it from the rest of the image, is the first problem. Entire books are written on the subject of how to make good selections. CS5 makes it easier, but it still requires some operator skill and that comes through study and practice.

Once you have the sky isolated, you can easily sample the color from one image and fill the second sky with that color, but it will look terrible. The most perfect blue sky is not an even blue, so unless you're drawing kids cartoon books, simply filling the sky with a nice blue color isn't going to cut it. Useful tricks for this sort of stuff include using different blending modes, layer masking, adding noise, etc. and each one of these skills have been the subject of countless books, tutorials, and videos. You're not going to learn everything you need to know in this thread, that's for sure. Suffice it to say, doing it so that it doesn't look fake is not as easy as we would all wish.

Having said that, I sometimes surprise myself when using ACR if a pale blue sky needs a little boost. Using the saturation part of the HSL panel to put an adjustment point on the sky and then using the scrubby slider to improve the color often produces surprisingly good results. It works the same in LR too.

It certainly is easy and I find myself using it on many of my snapshots, but it's not quite the same thing you're after.

Bottom line: It ain't all that easy to do it correctly.
 

Growltiger

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Easy, if the sky area in the target image can be selected fairly easily, for example using the Magic Wand.

It should take under two minutes.

1. Open both images at once.

2. In the source image (where you like the sky colour), select as much as you can of the sky, try to get a good chunk of it vertically as there is likely to be a gradient of colour. You could use the Lasso tool or the Magic Wand.

3. In the target image, use the Magic Wand to select the sky. You may need to alter the Tolerance (see the toolbar at the top), and you may need to click it several times in different places to make it add to the selection, again see the toolbar for the little icon for Add to selection.

4. On the menu, use Image/Adjustments/Match Color - a window opens
- Use the pulldown called Source to select the name of the source image you have open.
- The two boxes just above that should be ticked already.
- Adjust the Luminance, Color Intensity and Fade sliders to taste. The Fade slider reduces the amount of change.
- Click OK.

All done. What is so clever about this method is that you get a natural colour gradient in the sky.
 
Joined
Jan 29, 2005
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St. George, Utah
What growltiger said, and, if you just like a particular shade of blue that you see in the sky and want to apply it to something else a simple eyedropper can capture the color and say apply it to a ribbon or other object.
 
Joined
May 7, 2005
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Delaware, USA
Another approach is to create individual swatches of colors you like. You can create a custom swatch with just blues that you sampled from skies with the eyedropper tool, then use the methods above to apply them to your photos.

A search on Youtube will get you up and running with swatches if you're not familiar. IIRC the process hasn't changed, so you needn't worry about watching videos with older versions of PS.
 
Joined
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Chicago
I would suggest you photograph a blue sky when you see it and keep a catalog in your computer. Some of mine have clouds, sky, and no foreground.

I generally select a sky using the blue channel, modify the selection, and move it to layers as a selection. Make a mask of the selection and insert the sky of choice.

My catalog is in the form of "stickeys" numbered 1 to 100 and the photos are date/event listed under it, ie 08-25-2007 Suzanne birthday party. Follow that format and all photos stay in date order and are simple to find. Clouds are 02 clouds. Moons are 03 moons. The computer keeps all the 01 to 99 always at the top of the list
 

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