Changing Color of a White Car

[marcelrobi]

Hey guys,  I'm a noob with affinity, started with the trial and decided to bite the bullet and purchase it.  My goal is to someday use apple as my main computer.

 

I have a stock photo of a very white vehicle which I am trying to colorize, if that is the right term, but am not getting some good results.

 

I was wondering how would you guys approach this scenario.  I have tried various selection techniques and got a few decent ones, I have tried adjustments using hsv, I just can't seem to pull out a good result.  I have also tried some ideas from youtube videos, however the picture in question already had a color to it.

 

Any tips or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thank you kindly.

[Madame]

When you are satisfied with your selection (use the refine option if you need), you can place the selection on it's own layer: Cmd J

Fill the selection with colour with the flood  fill tool.
Set the blend mode to multiply. Adjust the opacity if you have to.

You can then use the recolour adjustments layer to change the colour.

 

 

[DWright]

Hi marcelrobi,

 

I get very good results using the channel mixer adjustment layer as it does not wash out the shadow and fine details from the original image see attached screenshot of changing a white car to yellow.

 

Regards,

Darren

[Madame]

Nice, Darren!

[csp]

this kind of color changes are better performed in LAB color space you should give it a try !   i also would recommend to add a multiply layer of the car surface under the color layer to add more definition, probably with an curve adustmet to make it darker. 

[marcelrobi]

wow thanks for the awesome feedback from everyone.  I will try it again later today trying to find some of the tools you guys recommended and attempt to post my results.  I've been trying to give myself a series of challenges I know I can perform with either Xara from the windows world or adobe ps and ai.  I just can't seem to wrap my head around affinity yet.

 

Once again thank you kindly.

 

Marcel.

[barninga]

i tried adding a new fill layer, then changing its blending mode to overlay and changing its colour. also the subtract blend mode yields nice colour effects. the opacity setting helps tuning the intensity of the colour.

[marcelrobi]

well I tried a few different ways, I got a result, its not the greatest, could be due to my selection, however what worked was to invert my selection to a darker color first, then run a few different layer adjustments to get a color.  I think with practice I can get somewhere.
 
Thanks for all the great ideas everyone.

[csp]

...it looks solarized and you should really try LAB this kind of color calculations are performed very different in LAB space compared to RGB haev a look at my samples

[marcelrobi]

Hey CSP, that result does look more natural in every way.  And you achieved that somehow without inverting the white.  I will head over to the tutorial videos and look into these LAB spaces that you are referring to and see if I can get a similar result.  It seems when I do HSL on the white, it just slightly changes the tint, however your example the color really changed.

 

Thanks for your response.  I will give it another crack tonight after I learn about LAB and how to access it  :)

[csp]

YES,   LAB is the key to get realistic color changes !   

[csp]

another LAB approach with only a single curve adjustment layer - you can stay in rgb but you need to select LAB in the curve palette 

[csp]

another LAB approach with only a single curve adjustment layer - you can stay in rgb but you need to select LAB in the curve palette 

[marcelrobi]

Thats interesting csp, thanks again.  You make it look so easy haha.