What Photoshop Can Fix #1

When it comes to images, most viewers today would accept the notion that Photoshop can do anything.  Right?  You just press a button and voila.  Would that were the case.  Photoshop can do many things to and for visual images, but like anything else, getting effective results takes effort and expertise.  The program is precise as a razor blade but not easy to learn.  So in the first of a casual series, I’ll show an example of What Photoshop Can Fix.

This is a kitchen I captured for Henderer Design + Build of Corvallis last October.  For this traditional Arts & Crafts style home close to the OSU campus, Henderer had maximized the space available to create an attractive and functional kitchen.

 

The open door on the right side shows the view through the dining room and living room, complete with an interesting carpet color.  Let’s call it spicy brown mustard.  After looking at the proof, Lainey Dyer at the Henderer office asked if there was something I could do to change the carpet's color.  It really draws the eye, but that’s not the direction we want viewers to look.

The color replacement tool in Photoshop took care of this, changing the yellow to a subdued brown without altering the texture of the carpet.  I won’t go into detail about how to use the color replacement tool (there are plenty of tutorials online), but I’ll just say the fix works best when the original color and the replacement color are close in hue and brightness.  I sampled the putty-colored doorway for my new color but the difference between the two was too great for Ps to replace completely.  But I did get an effective change from the mustard, and Lainey said the result was acceptable.