Match Colour and Replace Colour for consistent sets
Make photos look like they belong together with Match Colour in Paint by Zaweba, and change one colour in a single dialog with Replace Colour.
Photos taken at different times, with different cameras or under different light rarely match. Put them side by side in a collage, a catalogue or an album and the difference jumps out. Match Colour in Paint by Zaweba addresses that directly. Replace Colour solves a different but related problem: changing one colour in a picture quickly.
Match Colour
Match Colour takes the colour statistics of one picture and applies them to another. The source can be any open document or a layer within one.
In practice, open the photo whose colour you like, then open or select the one you want to change, and run Match Colour with the first as the source. The second takes on the first's overall colour balance and tonal character.
Four controls let you shape the result. Luminance adjusts brightness. Colour intensity controls how strong the colours are. Fade blends the result back towards the original. Neutralise removes a colour cast from the target as part of the match.
Jobs Match Colour helps with
Product catalogues are an obvious one. Shots taken over several days can drift in colour; matching each to a reference shot makes the set look like it came from one session.
Event photos taken with two cameras usually have different colour. Matching one camera's pictures to the other's evens them out.
Composites benefit too. When you place a person cut from one photo into another, Match Colour on that layer with the background as the source helps the two sit together.
Replace Colour
Replace Colour picks a range of colour and changes its hue, saturation and lightness, all in one dialog. You pick a colour in the picture, set fuzziness to control how wide the range is, then move the sliders to change it.
It's the quick way to turn a blue car green, make a red sign orange, or adjust the colour of a shirt. Selecting the colour and changing it happen together, so you see the effect as you refine the range.
Choosing between Replace Colour and other tools
Replace Colour is like Colour Range plus Hue/Saturation in one go. It's quicker for simple jobs. For more control, using Colour Range to select and then a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer gives you a mask you can paint on and an adjustment you can revisit.
Tips for Match Colour
Pick a good source. The match copies the source's character, so if the source has a cast, the target will get it too. Neutralise can help.
Use fade to keep some of the original. A full match can be too strong, especially between very different scenes.
Match like with like. Matching a sunny outdoor shot to an indoor portrait will give odd results, because their statistics are so different.
When the match misfires
With Replace Colour, set fuzziness carefully. Too wide and other objects of similar colour change too. Too narrow and the edges of the object, which are often slightly different shades, stay the old colour.
With Match Colour, work on a duplicate or a copy of the photo so you can compare and go back.
Together these two tools make Paint by Zaweba useful for a job that's often overlooked: making a set of pictures feel like a set.
