The Match Color adjustment introduced in Photoshop CS is a powerful tool for matching colors between
two images, whether you’re aiming to maintain a consistent look in a series of shots or, as in
this tutorial, transforming a photo of the shoreline at mid-morning into an image of the same
beach at sunset.
Begin by downloading and extracting the MatchColors.zip archive (2.8MB), which contains the OceanView.jpg and BeachSunset.jpg images.
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Open the Ocean View and Beach Sunset images. To use Match Color,
make certain both images are in RGB
mode. Duplicate the Ocean View image
(Command/Ctrl-J) and name the new
layer Sunset.
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Choose Image > Adjustments > Match
Color... and select Beach Sunset from
the Source pull-down menu. Match Color
reads the color statistics from Beach Sunset and applies them to Ocean View.
Then adjust the dialog box settings to
fine-tune the image: Luminance adjusts
the overall brightness; Color Intensity
saturates or desaturates color; Fade does
just what it says—it fades the amount
of adjustment. The image at left displays the
settings for this tutorial. Checking the
Neutralize box would give this image
a washed-out look, so ignore it. Voilà!
Instant sunset!
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If you need to match a number of
similar images (such as matching a
model’s skin tones across an entire
photo shoot), click Save Statistics
when you have a good match. Then
use Load Statistics for the additional
images to match the original.
Match Color works best if you’re
willing to experiment. My final version is shown at the beginning of this tutorial. However, along the way
to getting the perfect sunset, I tried
several images. The first sunset (shown at left) was too intense in the
red spectrum. The second image was close to what I was
looking for but was a little too orange
in the far hills and the water.
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Rich Harris served as Creative Director of Wacom Technology, and has more than
20 years of experience in digital design, digital illustration, and prepress. He writes
on software solutions for national publications as well as teaches classes in Photoshop.
Contact him at harrisrich@comcast.net.
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