Gromov, I. (2023) How to Use the Color Replacement Tool in Photoshop: Envato Tuts+, Design & Illustration Envato Tuts+. Envato Tuts. Available at: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-the-color-replacement-tool-in-photoshop–cms-39825 (Accessed: 6 February 2024).
What You’ll Learn in This Color Replacement Tool Photoshop Tutorial
Where is the Color Replacement Tool in Photoshop?
Color Replacement Tool Photoshop settings
How to use the Color Replacement Brush
What You’ll Need
Before we get into the Photoshop color replacement tool, you can download these assets that were used during the production of this tutorial:
1. Where Is the Color Replacement Brush in Photoshop?
Step 1
Let’s start learning how to replace color in Photoshop. You can replace colors in Photoshop with the Color Replacement Brush, found in the Tools panel.
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Step 2
If you don’t see the Photoshop Color Replacement Tool in this panel, press the Edit Toolbar icon and select it here.
2. Color Replacement Tool Photoshop Settings
Step 1
Before using the Color Replacement Tool in Photoshop, you need to open the image and select the color you want.
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Step 2
Now you can set the Size, Hardness, and Spacing of your brush.
Step 3
After that, you can select one of the Blending Modes: Color, Hue, Saturation, or Luminosity. The Color mode is a default setting that will change the hue and the saturation. Hue settings will only affect the hue, Saturation will only affect the saturation, and the Luminosity will match the brightness of the original color to the brightness of the new color, while hue and saturation will be unaffected.
If you want to use Photoshop to replace one color with another, you should select Color, and in most cases, this will be your best choice.
Want to see some examples of how to replace color in Photoshop? Take a look at some examples of using Photoshop to replace a color with brush blend modes below:
The next setting is Sampling, and you can choose from three options: Continuous, Once, and Background Swatch.
Continuous Sampling will always look for the color you’re painting over, Once Sampling will follow the color from the initial point of your brush, and Background Swatch will only paint over the areas that match your Background Color.
The Limits setting controls the “spread” of the colors. This option sets the boundary up to which it can affect the color.
Contiguous will affect only the sampled area of pixels where the crosshair of your brush is. It will not change the color of the adjacent areas that match the same color.
Discontiguous will change the color of the adjoining areas with a matching sampled color up to the spread of the crosshair boundaries.
Find Edges will find the edges in your image and stop as it approaches the edge. The color change will affect only the edges.
In most cases, Contiguous will be the best option to use.
So, to use Photoshop to replace one color with another, let’s set the following settings:
Brush Size: 160
Mode: Color
Sampling: Continuous
Limits: Contiguous
Tolerance: 75%
After that, just paint over the areas where you want to change the color of your image.
