Photoshop Tricks, Part 1

One of the wonderful things about New York City is the architecture. No two building are alike, and some of the whitestones and brownstones have gargoyles "protecting" their entranceways.

Piper.tif is an image of such architectural fine points that, sadly, no one is doing anymore except Disney resorts. I wanted to hang up the picture, but because it's a monotone, almost-grayscale image, I figured the only way to make this an undepressing wall ornament was to colorize it.

And to do that, dear reader, we'll return to this color palletization stuff:

1. Open the Piper.tif image from the Examples\Chap24 folder on the companion CD. As a grayscale image, it has 256 possible tones; but we want, let's say, only 7 tones, which we'll replace with this nifty color palette.

2. Choose Image, Adjust, Posterize, and then enter 7 in the Number field. Click on OK. This amount means 7 samples times 1 channel, or 7. In Figure 24.11, you can see a copy I made to compare the posterized piper to the original. This image isn't too bad, considering all the visual information it's lost.

Figure 24.11 -- These are the steps necessary for creating a color version of the posterized, grayscale piper.

3. With the posterized piper in the foreground in the workspace, choose Select and then Color Range.

4. Because the Fuzziness slider goes from 0 to 200, and you want the 7 colors you will add to be perfectly antialiased and smooth, drag the slider to 29 (about 1/7 of 200), and then click on an area of the piper. I suggest you work from dark to light (selecting the 7 tones). Click the darkest tone, and then click on OK. A selection appears. Click a color from the Swatches palette, and press Alt(Opt)+Delete (Backspace) to fill the selection with the chosen color. Press Ctrl(Command)+D to deselect.

5. Repeat step 4 six more times, and the color palette you like will be applied to an image that I like!

6. Press Ctrl(Command)+S; keep the file open.

I refuse to insult your intelligence and show a black-and-white picture of the finished color piper. Instead, check out the color gallery in this book, and it wouldn't hurt my feelings in the least if I heard some "ooooohs" and "ahhhhs"—even in my imagination.