Change the Colors in Your Photos with Paint Shop Pro

There are several reasons why you might like to change the colors in your photos. Perhaps you simply don’t like the color of clothing you were wearing in a photo; or maybe your teenage daughter would like to see how she would look in a bright purple shirt before spending a generous amount of your money buying the one on “sale” at the mall (yeah right). Maybe you’d just like to have fun creating images that are totally outrageous and amusing, like turning the family pet into massive, furry pink and green thing on four legs; or perhaps you’d like to see how the walls in your bedroom would look painted a burnt orange. Another plus? Images containing high color contrast can help draw the eye to the subject and are brilliantly vibrant. We’re not always presented with bright contrasting colors out in the “real world”, so it’s a good thing we’ve got photo editing programs, like Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo, to help us out!

Step 1: Open the photo you wish to edit. When deciding on a photo to edit, keep in mind that when you change the color, everything within the photo that contains the same color will also be changed without taking further steps. The tolerance settings can be changed so the edits aren’t ridiculously sensitive and you can select specific areas to be recolored, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

For this tutorial, I’ll be changing the color of my niece’s shirt. You’ll also notice that when I do make the changes, because her fingernails are painted the same color as her shirt, these too, will also change.

(Click on images to enlarge)

Step 2: Make sure your Tools toolbar is visible, as well as the Tool Options palette. To do this, click on View>Toolbars>Tools and View>Palettes>Tool Options and make sure they are checked off.

Select the Color Changer tool on the left, as shown in the screenshot below. The Color Changer tool is grouped together with the Flood Fill tool, so if you can’t see it within the toolbar, click on the arrow beside the active tool to select the Color Changer. 

Step 3: From the Materials palette, click on the foreground swatch to open the Materials Property box. (The Materials palette should be visible on the right, press F6 on your keyboard if you don’t see it.) 

Please continue on to the next page of this tutorial to learn the final steps you need to take to change the colors in your photos.