How to Change Color of Any Object in Photoshop

There are many ways to do this, but my process delivers every time. I’ve been teaching my colleagues this tutorial for over a decade and I’d like to share it with you.

My first job ever in NYC at Elle Decor, I had to change the color of a vase. At the time, I did some Photoshop hack job. It was good enough, but I wanted to know the proper way to change the color of an object in Photoshop. After figuring it out for myself, I’m happy to share this industry secret.

Photoshop is a robust program to retouch images. For people who aren’t designers, this can be very daunting. I’ve found that the best way to learn a program is to work on actual projects. The more things you work on, you’ll become more familiar with the different tools available. After a while, you’ll develop your own process.

Let’s get to it!

**Disclaimer: I created this tutorial for Mac OS. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately?), I haven’t worked on a PC, so I don’t know the shortcuts. If you are working on a PC, you should still be able to follow along.

Things you’ll need

Photoshop – any version should work. I’ve been using this process for over a decade! If you don’t have Photoshop, you can find a 7-day trial here.
An image to work off of. You can download the 2 images I’m working with here.
A playlist – although optional, I find music meditative when I’m designing.

1. Open Your file

First, open Photoshop. In the top left, you can go to File > Open > donuts_orig.jpg or you can simply drag the file to the Photoshop icon in your dock.

2. Color reference

Locate the color_reference.jpg file on your Desktop or Finder window. Drag it onto your artboard.

For this image, we’re going to change the blue background and match it to the yellow background in the reference image.

3. Duplicate the layer

I turned off the visibility of the color reference layer for now. To do this, click the Eye icon next to the layer

To duplicate, go to the Layers panel on the bottom right and drag the layer to the “Create New Layer” icon. The shortcut for this is Command + J.

4. Desaturate the layer

Next, we have to remove the color from this layer. We do this so that when we apply the blend mode, it doesn’t have color affecting it underneath.

In the drop down menus at the top, go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. Shortcut: Command + Shift + U

5. Turn layer visibility off

There’s an eye icon next to the thumbnail of the layer. Click that to turn it off for now.

6. Make a selection

We need to select only the area of the image that we’re trying to change the color of. To make it easy, I chose an image that’s easy to select the background color.

On the left, you’ll see the Tools Panel, which is what you’ll mainly use for most projects. Go to the Quick Selection Tool. This is a quick and dirty way to make a selection. I will do a tutorial in the future on different ways to make selections.

Click and drag across the background of the image. Make sure to get the shadows, but also avoid the donuts!

To remove an area from the selection, hold down Option, and drag the area you’d like to remove.

To add to the selection, hold down Command, and drag the area you’d like to add.

7. Add a layer mask

A layer mask allows you to show a specific section(s) of a layer.

Let’s turn on the layer with the greyed out image back on. Click the empty box to see the eye icon.

Now, at the bottom, click the “Add a Mask” icon. It’s the rectangle with a circle inside. This will create a layer mask that is specific to the selection that we made, which is a huge time-saver.

8. Add an Adjustment Layer

Time to finally add color. Turn on the color_reference layer by clicking the empty to show the eye icon.

Click the Background copy layer.

Then, go to what I call the “cookie,” at the bottom of the Layers Panel and select Solid Color. Side note, I call it a cookie because it reminds of me a black and white cookie. I do live in NYC after all.

The Color Picker window will pop-up.

*I want to note here that the Solid Color Adjustment Layer appeared on top of the Background copy layer. If we didn’t click the Background copy layer earlier, it would’ve appeared at the very top and we wouldn’t be able to see the color reference.

9. Choose the color

Now, on the Color Picker Window, to choose a color, you can simply move your cursor off of the dialog box and onto the image. You’ll see the cursor turn into an eye drop. Choose the yellow from our reference image.

If you have a CMYK, RGB, or hex, you can input the breakdown into the appropriate fields.

Click Ok.

10. Add Clipping Mask

We want this color to only apply to our original selection of the background.

Right-click (Control + click on Mac) on the layer and choose “Create Clipping Mask”. Shortcut: Command + Option + G

You’ll see an arrow on the left of the color thumbnail pointing to the layer below. This applies the Layer Mask from the image below.

11. Change the Blend Mode

Almost there. Go to the Blend Mode dropdown in the Layers Panel and choose Color.

With this Blend Mode, the color picks up the original saturation of the image.

In this case, we need to do one final adjustment, such as shifting between lighter and darker colors. I like to do this through Curves.

12. Add an Adjustment Layer

Click the greyed out layer. Go back to the cookie, and this time choose Curves.

Click the curve in the center and drag up or down until the color is accurate.

The background color of the image should now be close if not exact to our reference image. Excellent job!!!

Hope this tutorial was helpful. Comment below any questions, issues you have, or other design tutorials you’d like to see in the future.