A quick way to change the color of any object while preserving its original texture. In this tutorial I use a tie and dress shirt as the examples.

1. Change Your Shirt & Tie
Michael E. Stern
Photography Education Consulting
Please note: MAC/PC keyboard equivalents are called out with the MAC key first:
option/alt, command/control and control-click/right-click.
1) The following information will explain how to change the color of objects while maintaining
texture information. This tutorial assumes you know how to adjust selection edges using Quick
Mask and a brush.
Make a selection around the tie with the Quick Selection Tool. If edges need to be adjusted, hit
Q on the keyboard to go into Quick Mask mode. Hit B on your keyboard to make the brush
tool active. Set brush parameters to taste in the Brush Engine. (F5 on the keyboard)
Toggle the Q key back and forth to see the effect of your edge adjustment efforts. Remember
black adds to the mask and white subtracts. Black conceals and white reveals The X key toggles
between foreground (black) and background (white) colors. When satisfied hit M on the
keyboard to make the Marquee Tool active so you can choose the Refine Edge button at the
top of the monitor. Refine the selection edges with the following settings:
Hit OK. Make a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer from the Layer menu or from the half
black, half white circle at the bottom of the Layers Palette. Move the sliders to taste.

2. After Hue change. Hard Light Blend Mode and 50% Opacity.
Shirt Change
Make a selection around the shirt and refine the edge
just like before. Due to its’ brightness values, for this
shirt coloring technique to work effectively, we have
to put this selection of shirt pixels onto its’ own layer
and paint it black and change the Blend Mode and
Opacity values.
After selecting the shirt pixels, make the Background
active before jumping the selected pixels to its’ own
layer command/control + J copies an active
selection to its own layer. Or use this menu
command:
Name the layer Shirt. Lock the layer so only the shirt pixels get painted in the next step:
Go to Edit – Fill, choose black as the color.
Click OK.

3. Command/control-click on the shirt layer thumbnail icon to load it as a selection. With the
selection active again, make a new Hue & Saturation Adjustment Layer and set the option:
Colorize.
Move the sliders to taste. Click OK.
Set the Blend Mode of the Hue &
Saturation Adjustment Layer to Color and
the Blend Mode of the Shirt layer to
Luminosity and the Opacity to 55%.
The idea of Blend Modes and Layer Opacity settings is to let textures of the underlying shirt
blend with the new color. End use and/or client demands will drive these choices. Experiment
now and play, this is not the time to be timid grasshoppers.
Adobe® Photoshop® used with permission of Adobe Systems
Incorporated. This is a registered trademark in the US and/or other
countries.