tips from britt: recoloring

Hi there! The Britt Girls informed me this past week that they used to really love the "Tips from Britt" articles I used to write for the ScrapMatters' newsletter back in the day. So I decided that I'd start writing them again on the blog!! Once a month (or maybe more) I'll post a Tip from Britt!

Today's tip is about RECOLORING. I wrote about recoloring in January of 2009, but I've learned a lot since then, so while I repeat a little of what I wrote back then, I'll also give you a couple new tips!

I don't know about you guys, but money always seems to be a little tight! And, not that I want to discourage you from shopping at Britt-ish Designs (hahah!) BUT I do want to show you how your digital products can go a long way, making your dollar stretch! Because face it, times our tough these days and we are all being a little more careful. Aren't we?

Recoloring is one of my very favorite things about digital scrapbooking. You can make your favorite papers and elements match in a snap! There are MANY ways to recolor, but I'm just going to share one quick tip so you can use your papers & elements again and again.

(My tips are all related to Photoshop CS3 since that's the program I use. But I know you can do similar things in Photoshop Elements and other programs too!)

"Colorizing". Say I have a patterned paper. I LOVE the pattern, but the color simply will not work for the page I'm creating. Most of you know to try recoloring by playing with the hue & saturation sliders. But sometimes, if your patterned paper has a lot of colors, that just doesn't make it match! Here's one solution - I select the color I'm trying to match (using the eyedropper tool - ctrl + I - makes it super easy to match exact colors in my photo) as my "foreground" color or what you might call your "brush color".

Then I go to the paper I want to recolor and make a duplicate of the paper (we don't want to edit the original paper and accidentally save over it or anything!!). So go to Image > Duplicate Image. Then close the original. With the copy paper open, select, Image > Adjustments > Hue & Saturation. Then on the little window that opens check the "colorize" box.
Before "colorizing":

After "colorizing":

Your paper will recolor itself all in shades of the color you picked. Its not always perfect, I almost always have to turn up the saturation, so play with the settings to get it looking right. And ta-da! You have a new paper that matches your new layout!!

To make the color match even better on this page after I colorized, I turned the saturation up, darkened it a bit, and turned the brightness down (Image > Adjustments > Brightness & Contrast).

Colorizing works great for ribbons, flowers, alphas all kinds of embellishments!

Hope this tip helped!