There are times when you love the texture or pattern of a paper but the colour just doesn’t fit with your photo or with what you had in mind. Perhaps it was too feminine, or too masculine, but you still want to use the paper so you think about changing its colour. One way to do it is use the Change To Target brush. You will find it on the Tools toolbar just underneath the Paint Brush with the other brush tools like Dodge, Burn and Soften.
fig 1
The Change To Target brush is just like any other brush; you can use the different brush shapes in the brush preset list, alter the Brush Variances, change opacity and density. This makes it a very versatile way to change the colour of a paper or element. But as with many tools in PSP it takes practice and experimentation to find just the right setting for a particular situation. In this first example, I have a birthday card. I love the rich textures of the paper and the colours have a masculine feel which is what I need. I found a ribbon I’d like to use too, but of course it’s not really the right colour.
fig 2
In the Materials Palette I picked two colours from the background papers. I then set the Foreground/Stroke box to Gradient and chose the Fading Foreground/Background gradient with Repeats=8.
fig 3
I used a default brush tip—here are my settings: I also have the Mode=Colour.
fig 4
I painted across my ribbon: now I actually quite like the effect of this first time, so there’s not much need to play around with the settings after all. But if it wasn’t quite what I wanted I would perhaps try another Mode, or change the opacity or use a different brush tip.
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Here is the same ribbon: this time I changed only the Mode=Saturation and it gives a beautiful, deep and intense colour.
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How the Change To Target brush works will depend upon the colour of your starting image. That’s why it’s all a matter of experimenting to get the right effect. The more you use the tool the more experienced you will become in predicting possible effects from colours that you are using.
I made another card using the same basic layout and papers but changing the colour scheme, using these colours:
fig 7
I used the same default brush and stayed with the same Mode=Colour: I love how it brings out that swirly pattern on the background paper: it makes it just that little bit different from the original and this is a great way to make your favourite papers go that little bit further!
fig 8
Materials used: Papers from Autumn Memories by Shawnery Mathis; Journal block from Holiday by Vickie Stegall; Ribbon from Still Life by Nancy Rowe Janitz; Fonts: Baveuse, Delta Hey Max Nine by Ray Larabie & Lorraine Bold by Darcy Baldwin.
First Printed in Tid-Bytes May 2008
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