How to change/replace color of the shirt?

Hello,

I am trying to put together a composite poster for my son's rec basketball team. Some of the images I want to use were taken during practice so the kids didn't wear their "uniforms" (just a grey t-shirt provided by the Park & Rec Dept).
So I basically need to (as an example) make the kid in blue wear gray.

I tried sampling the color and then just filling the shirt with it but wasnt getting the right look.
I created the brush from the grey shirt but that didnt work either.

I tried searching for tutorials online but wasnt able to find one that would help in my situation. I know there probably is one out there so if you could point me to it I would greatly appreciate it.

smyke wrote in post #15700258
Hello,

I am trying to put together a composite poster for my son's rec basketball team. Some of the images I want to use were taken during practice so the kids didn't wear their "uniforms" (just a grey t-shirt provided by the Park & Rec Dept).
So I basically need to (as an example) make the kid in blue wear gray.

I tried sampling the color and then just filling the shirt with it but wasnt getting the right look.
I created the brush from the grey shirt but that didnt work either.

I tried searching for tutorials online but wasnt able to find one that would help in my situation. I know there probably is one out there so if you could point me to it I would greatly appreciate it.

Do you mind posting the image in question?

Also, post a "before" and "after" your own attempts and explaing " wasnt getting the right look"!

Does THIS give you any ideas?

Without seeing an example it's tough to say, but my first guess would have been (assuming Photoshop) to duplicate the layer, then add a hue/saturation adjustment (Ctrl+u), set to Colorize... then apply a mask so it's only applied to the shirt(s) you want.

Photoshop has a "replace colour" option, where simply selecting the colour with the pointer thingy tells the software what area it needs to deal with so that it masks it out itself. Then simply select the colour you want and bingo, job done.

Desaturate blues using hue and saturation

I have tried desaturating and color picker but dont get the same kind of gray as the kid on the right.
Here is the "quick and dirty" example of what I am dealing with.

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I used two adjustment layers and painted a rough mask to apply the effect:

1) Hue/Saturation - target the Cyans, and click with the dropper to restrict to just the cyans contained in the shirt. Desaturate to taste and boost the Lightness as well.

2) Curves adjustment - the player on the right (the reference gray shirt) has a general Lab shirt of about L90 a1 b-8, with the player on the left having a Lab gray shirt of about L90 a0 b-3. You need a little more blue and a tiny bit more red to match the player on the right. Target the blue channel in the curves adjustment and use the hand-up-and-down-arrow tool (targeted adjustment tool) to click on the left player's shirt to place a point on the curve for the shirt. Adjust to get the blue boosted enough. You may need to adjust the RGB (luminosity) as well to get a match.

To monitor what you are doing, place a color sampler point on each shirt and watch the numbers until they explicitly match by the numbers. From there you can tweak to get a visual match, if it doesn't "look" right. Remember, that the desaturation process desaturates EVERYTHING, whereas the gray shirt shot in the prevailing lighting may also pick up fill light of a different color in the shadows. If you really care, you can introduce the fill light color into the shadows to add this level of anal retentiveness.

Also, just be aware that, in the image you have posted, the blues appear as if they are clipped, resulting in bright blue artifacts in the transitions from one blue tone to another. It is hard to judge from the small JPEG, but something to be aware of in terms of your exposure, white balance and working color space.

kirk

True, you won't be able to paint with another color, or you'll lose all the varying shades of blue that make the shirt 3-dimensional.

Putting aside the logo issue, here's what I would do:

Draw an oval selection around the blue shirt, so that when you select those colors, the rest of the image won't be affected. The oval doesn't need to be precise, it just can't contain any blue that's not the actual shirt.

Go to Image...Adjustments...​Replace Color, and select every different shade of blue in the shirt, adding them all together in the selection by pressing the "+" eyedropper after your first click.

In the Replacement portion, use these values:
Hue +37
Sat -53
Light +77

See if that gets you closer to where you want to be.

Loosely select the shirt and copy to its own layer. Add a layer mask and fine tune to shirt. Rename “grayscale base” if desired.
Add and clip a curves adjustment layer.
Sample the color desired for the change on the other shirt.
Create a new layer and fill with that color. Copy that layer 2 times. You’ll have 3 layers filled with the color.
Bottom color layer - change blend mode to multiply and opacity to 50%, clip to curves layer.
Middle color layer - change blend mode to overlay and opacity to 50%, clip to multiply layer.
Top color layer - change blend mode to color and opacity to 50%, clip to overlay layer.
Adjust the layer opacities of the 3 color layers to fine tune.
Adjust the curves adjustment if desired.

It sounds like a lot it’s not really. I created an action for the layers. This method should retain some of the differences due to shadows and highlights.

Thank you all for your help. I will have to try it when I get home from work.

Any thoughts on getting rid of the graphics on his shirt?

Using a combination of the healing brush and clone stamping seems like the best bet to me, and I was able to get some results from your lo-res image that weren't horrible. The hi-res version should be easier to get to be convincing.

But if you have a number of those to clean up, that will be a ton of work.

A side critique (which you may not care about): the kid on the left seems to be standing, but his feet are placed higher than the kid on the right, who has jumped...