Converting Colors Using PSP 8.0

[Harry Tuttle]

I'm looking to convert the colors of a unit from a dark green to a dark brown and I was wondering if there is an easy way to do this besides using the "Color Switcher" in PSP 8.0.

I have found that manually selecting two colors, switching the colors, then selecting another two colors can be tedious and sometimes fruitless in the end if the color shading is not quite what I want.

Is there a quick and dirty way of coverting the colors? Could I switch palletes from one unit pic to the next?

[techumseh]

I use PSP 5.0. I isolate the area to be recolored with the freehand selection tool, then go to adjust colors and select red/green/blue or hue map. Then I fiddle, using the other tools like contrast, lightness, etc. as well. It's really trial and error - perhaps there's a more scientific approach that someone uses - maybe Catfish or Fairline can shed more light.

[Harry Tuttle]

I've thought about using that approach but of course there's the problem of not quite matching the color. Then again, it would probably be quick and easy to use, considering I'm going to be using the TOT palette and not the constrained MGE palette.

[fairline]

Easier than that - use the 10th tool down on the left-hand tool sidebar; IIRC the default mode is 'saturation brush' Click on the drop down arrow on the right of the tool button and change to 'change-to-target'. This defaults to a huge brush size, so click on the preset 'size' menu button which appears on the top menu bar after selecting the tool and change to 1. Now you can select whatever colour you like from the palette and paint over the original - lightness and colour depth will be retained

[Harry Tuttle]

So what you're saying is that the base color will change, just not the shade or hue?

[Harry Tuttle]

Ah I got it. It's called the "change to target". It's the tool option under "lighten darken". What it does is change the base color while allowing the shade to stay the same.

In my trials I first cut and pasted the unit I wanted to change to another bitmap file. I then cut out of the unit the pixels I didn't want changed, notably the windows, people, treads, and canvas etc; and replaced those pixels with pure white, leaving just the armor.

I then used one of Fairline's brown Shermans as the target. I picked the lightest shade of brown on the Sherman as my color to change to. This seemed to work the best since the other shades in the unit I wanted to change were already pretty light. Using the tool I covered the cutout unit and voila', I have a brown cutout unit.

I then cut and pasted the colore changed cutout unit onto the old unit with my white areas as transparent so that the areas I didn't want changed poked through.

If you're adventurous and have the time, you could just mask out the area you want changed with the "masking" tool in PSP instead of cutting out the unit.

Thanks Fairline!

[fairline]

There's a quick and easy way to isolate a unit from the background as well; select the pink background around the unit using the 'magic wand' and then press cntl - shift - i to invert the selection (ie select everything except the background colour). You can merrily recolour away without worrying about running over the edge of the unit and recolouring the background by mistake. In the example above you'd need to be careful when recolouring around the tank tracks, but this isn't a problem if you chose a 'change to target' brush size of 1.

The 'magic wand' is an option on the 4th tool down on the LHS tool bar - you'll need to change the tool from the default 'selection tool'.