Any Photoshop wizards out there? Advise needed.

peejay1986

Ok so basically I've been asked by my uncle to edit a photograph for him, but my knowledge of Photoshop hasn't expanded this far yet.

What he wants is the desk in this photo to be changed to white, instead of oak. Same with the drawer fronts on the pedestal.



Is this do-able in a way that would look realistic? I've had a few go's myself and although it looks ok it is still clear that I used the brush or replace colour. Nothing looks like anything that could pass as real.

Anyone give me any advice on how I should go about it?

Thanks in advance.

doonothing

Best bet would be to use the Polygonal Lasso Tool (just hit L) and draw around the basic geometric shapes of the desk and drawers. Then, hit Q to go into quickmask mode. Everything you had selected will stay normal, everything you hadn't selected will go red. Hit B, and using a 100% hardness brush (right click to change this), brush in white what you want to keep in the selection, and brush black what you want to take out of the selection. Then go filter > blur > gaussian blur, and apply at something under 1px, whatever you think looks best! Then hit Q again to exit quick mask mode, now you should have a good selection fo the desk. Then hit CTRL + U to bring up hue saturation etc. Drag saturation down and drag lightness up until you have a realistic looking white et voila!

I dunno about the wizards, but that's how I'd do it. It's a bit manual, and takes a bit of slog, and there's probably a much quicker and easier way to do it! But give it a bash sure. If you need any more help just ask away.

5uspect

Here you go.

peejay1986

5uspect wrote: »

Here you go.

That's very good!! It's a bit too much like Maple wood and not the white finish I'm after.

How did you do that?

Thanks

5uspect

Used the quick selection tool to select the wood and then did some colour corrections using various tools such as Hue/Saturation, colour balance and curves.

Are you looking for really really white? As in washing machine white? That might be tough making it look realistic. Thats one reason I kept the grain and most of the texture.

EDIT: Here's a second quick attempt.
I may have over done the floor reflections tho.

Thoie

Do you mean something like this, except with all the wood gone?


I used the magic wand on the wood, pressing select to add extra bits to it, then used the bucket fill tool to drop white on top. The bits done so far took about 3 minutes, but to finish the rest of it would be quite time consuming as you'd have to zoom in to each bit of the screen to finish off the more finicky bits. It ends up quite fake (look at the way the right edge of the centre desk blends into the other desk), and flat, as you lose out on the shadows and natural play of light. If he just wants it for an idea of how his office would look with a white desk, it might suffice. If he wants it for promo work then you'd have to get into the more complex things 5uspect was doing.

peejay1986

5uspect wrote: »

Used the quick selection tool to select the wood and then did some colour corrections using various tools such as Hue/Saturation, colour balance and curves.

Are you looking for really really white? As in washing machine white? That might be tough making it look realistic. Thats one reason I kept the grain and most of the texture.

EDIT: Here's a second quick attempt.
I may have over done the floor reflections tho.

This is the closest. It is not a wood finish, it's a white plastic-like finish.

Thanks very much for your help, everyone

p

Trying to make it appear like a plastic white finish is going to be difficut. Tweaking colours in a photo is easy, but in that situation you're actually drawing new elements and essentially painting an entirely new desk and need an experienced artist/retoucher.

cosgrove80

Any use?

DonkeyStyle \o/

Ooh, very slick cosgrove... nice job.

peejay1986

cosgrove80 wrote: »

Any use?

Wow that's absolutely perfect. Thanks

How did you manage to do that? It'd be handy to know for the future.

cosgrove80

peejay1986 wrote: »

Wow that's absolutely perfect. Thanks

How did you manage to do that? It'd be handy to know for the future.

Glad I could help.

I pretty much did it the way the others were going about it.

I used Select > Colour Range, to select the browns in the image and then filled that selection with white.

I also used the orginal image in another layer with the "Luminosity" blending mode (blurred in the brown areas to remove the grain from the wood) to add back in the shadows and shading etc.

That's the basics really. I used several layers and different blending modes to get the effect. I also added extra white in places and deleted it in others as well as redrawing the black lines on the drawers.

Overall, I think there were about 10 layers in total

p

Nice work. Any chance you could throw up the PSD?

I tried ot recreate what you did before that post and got some joy by drawing white shape layers over all the areas, and then adding gradients to match the lighting. Looked decent, but was quite a long process.

cosgrove80

I've tried to attached the zipped PSD but it won't upload. I'm away for the week but will upload it somewhere next friday if you still want it