What about ‘Match Color’; a PhotoShop technique forgotten?
I was sitting in an Adobe presentation during the HOW Design Conference in Las Vegas, NV when the audience shocked themselves. Standing in front of hundreds of some of the top design talent in the country; the adobe reps asked for a raise of hands for who uses or has even heard of the “Match Color” function in PhotoShop? Needless to say, only a hand-full of arms went into the air as the rest of the audience sat-up in anticipation to learn!
Since such a great number of professionals don’t know or have forgotten about this little technique – let me give everyone a quick refresher in three easy steps. Essentially, “Match Color” lets you take the colors of one document and apply them to another (assuming both are open documents in PhotoShop). I am going to focus on changing an entire image, but you can isolate and apply the color change to a selection as well. In my example, I am going to take a beautiful blue morning sky and give it the same color attributes as another image containing a beautiful red sunset. Notably, this is a pretty easy and simple example (I am only showing concept here); however, I’ve found this to be a great tool when giving a rather pale person a more attractive tan of another. So, how do we do this?
Open your two documents in PhotoShop
You want to open both documents you need to work with – the document to change (target) and the document to reference (source) the color change. Select your primary image and ….
Open the “Match Color” menu
Go to the top menu bar, select “Image” and go down to the “Adjustments” item and then select “Match Color” from the side-menu.- Select your “Source”
Within the “Match Color” menu, ensure your “Target” is correct (the image whose color you want to change). Then under “Image Statistics”, choose your “Source” file (the image whose colors your want to emulate).
Click “OK” and you’ve just matched colors from one document to another!
- June 16th, 2006
- 5comments
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I’m using Photoshop 7 on a PC, and there is no “Match Color” option. Is this a CS feature? Your screenshot shows that it should sit below the “Desaturate” option and above the “Replace Color…” option. In my copy of Photoshop, its simply not there. I’ve checked this with 2 images that are RGB and 2 that are CMYK. I couldn’t even find it in the Help documentation. It would be nice if you’d let your readers know if this is a version specific option.
I apologize – I’d hate to alienate any of the audience; but I believe I did. I know many people are still on PhotoShop 7 and below, but I’ve got a two version rule. So I did write only for CS and CS2 (which I am currently working with). The reason being that I tend to think my blog posts are more attractive because they tend to be short and to the point. I do know that “Match Color” is available in PhotoShop 7 – I’ll have to hunt around tonight on my older PC to figure out exactly where it is. Remember, I prefaced with the fact that this post was an elaboration on a presentation given by Adobe to a group of designers.
Again, I agree that you make a perfectly vaild point.
Match Color as well as Replace Color are excellent tools.
And another problem is both files HAVE to be RGB or the option doesn’t highlight :(
True! Sorry for leaving that out. If you think about the process a little bit, it makes sense why it would have to be RGB and why each file would have to be the same. I know it sucks, but so is life!