Swaping colours in CS4

[novascotiaskier]

I'm looking to change the green hue of a truck hood to a blue hue and have tried the Saturation layer, green channel, and adjusting the hue with little success (no surprise) as well as overlaying both photo filters and a colour fill layer without any success.  Finally, trying the "replace colour" seems to only pick one tone and not the range of tones, so the result is very choppy.

any suggestions on CS4 techniques that might work well in swapping out a range of one colour tones for another?

thanks!

[DiaAzul]

Are you applying these adjustments to the whole image, or just the selection that you are trying to manipulate. The tools you are using are valid tools for changing the hue of the hood, however, you will need to create a selection mask so that they only apply to the part of the image (hood) that you are trying to change and not to the whole image.

[jerryrock]

From the Adobe Help Menu:

The Replace Color command lets you create a mask to select specific colors in an image and then replace those colors. You can set the hue, saturation, and lightness of the selected areas. Or you can use the Color Picker to select the replacement color. The mask created by the Replace Color command is temporary.

Choose Image > Adjustments > Replace Color.
(Optional) If you are selecting multiple color ranges in the image, select Localized Color Clusters to build a more accurate mask.
Select a display option:
Selection Displays the mask in the preview box. Masked areas are black, and unmasked areas are white. Partially masked areas (areas covered with a semitransparent mask) appear as varying levels of gray according to their opacity.
Image Displays the image in the preview box. This option is useful when you are working with a magnified image or have limited screen space.
To select the areas exposed by the mask, do one of the following:
Use the Eyedropper tool  to click in the image or in the preview box to select the areas exposed by the mask. Shift-click or use the Add To Sample Eyedropper tool  to add areas; Alt-click (Windows), Option-click (Mac OS), or use the Subtract From Sample Eyedropper tool  to remove areas.
Double-click the Selection swatch. Use the Color Picker to target the color you want replaced. As you select a color in the Color Picker, the mask in the preview box is updated.
Adjust the tolerance of the mask by dragging the Fuzziness slider or entering a value. This slider controls the degree to which related colors are included in the selection.
To change the color of the selected areas, do one of the following:
Drag the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders (or enter values in the text boxes).
Double-click the Result swatch and use the Color Picker to select the replacement color.
You can also save the settings you make in the Replace Color dialog box for reuse in other images.
For a video on dodging and burning and using the Replace Color command, see www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4119_ps.

[novascotiaskier]

Thanks for the help guys.  I did not properly understand the "localized clusters" and the resulting usefulness of the "range" slider.  Also, I had my layer way too high in my stack, so that I was adjusting colour upon colour (i.e., applying a filter upon the green base), whereas if I used the proper colour range selection and incorporated it straight into my base layer, I have many fewer colour issues.

Once again, thanks!

-Scott.