Changing the color of the picture's background

[desibull]

I am a novice Elements user but have an urgent need to create an inivitation for a religious ceremony for my son. I am therfore turning to the wonderful helpful experts in this forum.

I do not like the blue background in the inserted image and would like to turn it to a saffron color. How do I do it? I tried fooling with the Foreground and background color but nothing happened because I guess PSE4 considers the whole image as one. I am not sure if I have to play around with layers as I have not idea of how to do so. Therefore some detailed instructions would help.

Well, how do I get an image inserted here. It is asking me for a URL. I have the image loaded to my gallery. Sorry to initiate a thread within a thread:(

[Diana]

Here's the link to your image for anyone wanting to see it:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/gallery/view_img.php?id=25078

You'll need to make a selection in order to separate your design from the background in order to change the background. Since your background is not a solid color and your design is, it will be easier to select the design.

Get the Magic Wand tool and in the Option Bar at the top, make sure Contiguous is unchecked, and then click somewhere on the black design with the magic wand. That should give you the marching ants around the design.

Next, press Ctrl-J to copy the black design to a new layer. You can make it a little darker by draggin that new layer to the Create New Layer icon in the layer palette, so you have two layers of the design.

Now make the background layer active, Press Ctrl-U to get the Hue/Saturation adjustment box, click Colorize, then drag the Hue slider until you get a color that is pleasing to you.

Save your image both in the PSD format and JPG format. Then you can use the JPG format and keep the PSD version with the layers intact in case you ever want to make changes to it later.

Hope this helps.

Diana

[Rusty]

Diana is giving you a good way. She is faster than I am too. :)
I was doing it exactly the same way so I'll go ahead and post a screen shot to illustrate what she explained as far as "selecting"

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1bCHjgT4qdK9gPbHF7FwHcPba55_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1bCHjgT4qdK9gPbHF7FwHcPba55)

Rusty

[desibull]

Diana:
Thanks a ton for your response. I carried out your steps but I guess I missed something because now I have ended up with 3 layers in the layer palette: the original image is the background layer, the extracted image as Layer 1, and then another image of the extracted image (you had suggested to create a new layer to get the image darker) as "copy of layer 1". They are all separate. Could you please clarify, and I apologize if I am asking stupid questions.

Thanks again!

[Diana]

That's right. You can merge the two top layers which are the extracted design, if you want to. When I tried this out, I just thought it looked better duplicated. The bottom layer, the original you started out with, is the one you must make active when you open the Hue/Saturation dialog. That may be what you missed.

By the way, here are some instructions for using Pixentral to post examples if you ever need it:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showpost.php?p=296937&postcount=8

Diana

[desibull]

OK, I get what you wanted me to do and the principle behind layers. Basically by extracting the image onto its own layer and making it transparent I can adjust just the background. Right?

Now, in the Hue/Saturation box I am not able to get the Reds to appear even though I slide the Hue bar. When I uncheck "colorize" it allows me to edit the Reds but then when I colorize again I am back to my original problem.

[Diana]

I don't think you'll be able to get a perfect saffron this way, the closest to yellow I could get was between tan and a light greenish.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1nuAGu4dAcX1iTJ0LhLlpM7FeATxyx_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1nuAGu4dAcX1iTJ0LhLlpM7FeATxyx)

If you didn't need the signature on the background, you could do a Filter > Render > Clouds using the background & foreground colors shades of yellow or any color you would like. But it would cover up the signature.

http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1Zur2jT0pNrFmEm3ATNaW1xNpOouWZ_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Zur2jT0pNrFmEm3ATNaW1xNpOouWZ)

Diana

[desibull]

Thanks Diana! You have provided me a lot to get started. I am not sure how I did this but with the Background layer selected I applied the Conte Crayon filter and I gave me a rich red background color; I had set the Background and Foreground color to red and so I am thinking it took it from there. But now when I change the Background color to the orange I am looking for I am unable to get it to update the red. I will play with it more and show you what I get.

Thanks a bunch!:)

[Diana]

You're very welcome.

Diana

[Vesta]

I don't know if you have it all done but I did it just a little different. I did every thing like Diana said except I did a solid color adjustment layer and add a render clouds filter to it. I then duplicated that layer to get a richer color. Here is a screen shot ( I merged the two layers of the selected emblem to make them darker as Diana said). I am so hesitate to help because others know so much more and don't want to lead in the wrong direction.


http://www.pixentral.com/hosted/1I1krhJSVFeq76YXXvpSJAmLA1rAF_thumb.jpg (http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1I1krhJSVFeq76YXXvpSJAmLA1rAF])

Vesta

[Diana]

Vesta, your method is probably the better one. I was trying to keep it simple, not knowing if Desibull is familiar with adjustment layers. And, as we all know, there are always multiple ways of doing things in Elements. Please don't be hesitant to give your input, two heads (or more) are always better than one.

Diana

[Diana]

This thread brought up an interesting question to me. I had always thought the color saffron was yellow, but here I get the indication others think of it as an orange. So I tried to find more info online and came up with this, so I guess both are right:

http://www.foodcolor.com/saffron.html

Then my mind wandered (it does that a lot) to a tip I had once learned....how to sample a color in a web page from Elements. You'll need to resize the Elements window and the web page by tiling them, so they both are visible at once.

In Elements, press the I key to get the eyedropper tool. Then, from the document open in the Elements workspace, press the left mouse button and while holding it down, drag to the web page window to the color you wish to sample, then release the mouse button. The foreground color in the Elements color chips will change to the color you sampled.

Diana

[ktbruns]

Excellent instructions. Thanks.