Creating Keepsakes

Stretch your digital scrapbooking supplies by learning easy Photoshop Elements recoloring techniques. You’ll get more out of your kits and be able to make product fit any color scheme. For more recoloring techniques, check out Pattie Knox’s 101 column, “Recolor Your World” in the December/January 2009 issue of Digital Scrapbooking magazine.

Method 4: Grayscale Re-coloring
1 Open a digital image.
2 Save the file under a new name. This will prevent you from making permanent changes to the original image and is a good habit to get into.
3 From the Enhance menu, point to Adjust Color, click Remove Color to convert the image to grayscale. 
4 From the Layers palette, right-click on the image layer and choose Duplicate layer from the drop-down menu.
5 Create a new layer between the two image layers.
6 Select a foreground color with the Color Picker tool. Select the Paint Bucket tool, and click once on the canvas to fill the empty layer with color.
7 Press CTRL+ G to group the color with the image.

8 From the Layers palette, right click the color layer. Select Merge Down to combine the color and bottom image layers.
9 Target the top image layer. Set the Blending mode to Linear Light.
10 From the Enhance menu, point to Adjust Lighting, click Brightness/Contrast.
11 Adjust the Brightness and Contrast sliders. Then click OK.

 
It may take some experimenting to achieve the desired mix of color and contrast. Try Soft Light, Overlay or Luminosity as the Blending mode. Fine tune the color by reducing the opacity of the top layer.
12  Right click the top layer in the layers palette, and select Merge Down.