Although Photoshop has a fantastic selection of tools, adjustments and filters to do just about anything to an image, their are a few things that are still up to users to figure out the best way to handle. In this case, I was asked to change an object in an image from white and make it darker or even black. Clearly their are no tools to easily directly do this in Photoshop and make it appear natural. So, I decided to put a few different tricks with layer blending modes to work in order to “invert” the white shirt without creating a “negative” look.
The first step is simple. Create a new layer and using black (or a dark color may also work) paint over the area you wish to change. It’s OK to be messy here, we can clean that up with a layer mask later. As an alternative, if the area you wish to change is large, you could fill the whole layer with the color and use the layer mask to reveal only the area you want.
Next we simply want to use the layer mask to clean that up. I would suggest first starting with a hard edge brush and rough it out. Then go back around with a small, slightly soft edge brush (20-30% softness max) and clean up the edge. The soft edge will be sure the transition isn’t so rough or harsh that it looks “cut out”. You can always adjust the edge overall later using the Refine Edge function but it’s easier to just get it as good as we can to begin with.
Now that we have what appears to be a solid black blob over our white object, we can change the blending mode from Normal to Multiply and lower the layer opacity so the white shows through some. In the example, I lowered it to 43% but this will depend on your image. With that layer ready, duplicate the layer (you can do this by dragging the layer to the “new layer” icon which will duplicate it). Place the duplicate layer over the current layer and then change the layer blending mode to Overlay. Again, the layer opacity will be adjusted to taste, but in this case I wanted to make the shirt very dark and bring back the natural contrast and shadow so using an opacity between 60-100% may be necessary (86% for this example). The higher the opacity, the darker the object will appear.
Before and After
The last step to make the black appear natural was to place a Hue / Saturation Adjustment Layer over the first two layers. On the adjustment layer, I adjusted the hue slightly towards the blue range for taste, then reduced the saturation by 60%. Using the layer mask, I painted in only the areas on the shirt I wished to appear more neutral. (The video explains this step more clearly.)
In the event you have any “blooming” outside of the areas of the actual object, you may need to use additional layers to clone out or paint out the unwanted problem areas. This will vary depending on the image and may not be necessary at all in some cases.
To watch the video above in HD, click the “YouTube” icon in the corner to watch it on YouTube. Don’t forget to switch to full screen 720p HD.