Find and replace a specific colour in a picture

[Maximilian]

Hello,

I would like to simply replace a specific colour in a picture. Background is that I have taken a picture of a bottle with a white background. But the white Background isn't exactly white, which is, however, important because I  want to use this picture on a website with a white background. I can't cut it out because I would loose the shadow and the picture would look odd.

I saw this feature on Corel Photo Paint and I believe it's also available in Adobe Photoshop where you could select a certain color and replace it with a color of your choice. I did not, however, find this feature on Affinity Photo (V2). That's why I would like to know if there's a similar feature available in Affinity Photo.

Thanks

 

[h_d]

Hi @Maximilian and welcome to the forum.

It's not a 'specific colour", though. It's a range of colours (mostly light-grey-purples). Even in your screenshot I can see the stripes. And the shadow has been cropped off. If it were me, I would delete the entire background to white and then paint in a light shadow using a soft brush.

Your average punter isn't going to be too concerned about its precise placing as they focus on the bottle.

[v_kyr]

See also related:

• How to Select and Change Colors in Affinity Photo (Youtube video)
• Using the Color Replacement Brush Tool (Online help)
• Change any Colour Using the Affinity Photo Colour Replacement Brush (Website tutorial)
• Colour Replacement Brush in Affinity Photo (Youtube video)
• Change Colours Using Affinity Photo's Colour Replacement Brush (Youtube video)
• Color Replacement Brush - Affinity Photo Tutorials - Tools explained (Youtube video)
• ... and so on, do a Forum & Google search after that topic ...

[user_0815]

Two different methods come to mind.

1. Use the levels to lift the underexposed background up. Pull the slider from the highlights side down. I would make a rough selection of the background first because it can over-brighten the subject rather quickly. Paint back any missing shadow or smoothen the transition with the mask.

2. Use divide to remove the background tone. Select the colour of the background, add a fill layer (it will have the selected olour) and set it to "Divide". Here too, you can paint back any shadow or detail you need. 

Method 2 works best if the subject is underexposed in the same way as the background. Otherwise you'll need to edit both independently. 

 

 

[Lel]

With Irfanview, that I've been using for 20 years +, to change colour we can simply click on a colour in the image and replace with another colour, adjusting tolerance to cover a range. So simple! 

[NotMyFault]

You can use a HSL adjustment in Photo or Designer (but there you won't have info panel).

 

1. add a HSL adjustment below on top
2. Add a rectangle shape in the target color on top
3. add to info panel color sampler. one in the target color area, on in the area you want to match. set both to "fixed position", and HSL
4. now use the HSL adjustment. choose one of the 6 color circles matching the old color best
5. adjust color shift so the result it roughly matches the target, either visually or numerically with info panel
6. adjust lightness if required
7. adjust tolerance if required

[thomaso]

In this case also a simple White Balance adjustment might help (and offers a Picker to select a colour).

[MLind]

On 2/10/2024 at 9:42 AM, Lel said:

With Irfanview, that I've been using for 20 years +, to change colour we can simply click on a colour in the image and replace with another colour, adjusting tolerance to cover a range. So simple! 

Today I decided I need a proper image editing program and installed Affinity Designer for a task that needed that, and some basic text / graphic additions.

Funnily enough, I ended up doing the color replacement (converting a logo to a dark mode alternative) in Irfanview, that I've been using as an image viewing program for the last 20+ years. Definitely a feature that should be added, used a similar feature in Gimp years back when I was working on implementing icons to a HUD of a game, and they basically needed to be turned from a blue basic coloring to red

[walt.farrell]

7 hours ago, MLind said:

Today I decided I need a proper image editing program and installed Affinity Designer

Welcome to the Affinity forums.

One comment: Designer is not primarily an "image editing" program. For that, you would want Affinity Photo.