Re-colour a simple button

phykell · 19 Jun 2006 at 16:45

Simple one I guess, but how do I recolour a basic image?

I have a red button and I want to recolour it blue using something like Paint Shop Pro:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/phykell/redbutton.jpg

If there was only one colour in the image it would be easy, I'd just repaint it with a blue colour but there are various shades of red on this button. Ideally, for each pixel I'd like to swap the red and blue values. Programatically I could get each .bmp RGB value and swap them for each pixel but there must be an easier way surely?

Pixel 1: 233, 0, 4 ---------> 4, 0, 233
Pixel 2: 243, 0, 2 ---------> 2, 0, 243
Pixel 3: 253, 0, 0 ---------> 0, 0, 253

binaryknight · 19 Jun 2006 at 16:50

cant remember psp off hand but in photoshop could either use the colour replace tool or just up the blue in the colour balance

Hamish · 19 Jun 2006 at 17:40

or change the hue

phykell · 19 Jun 2006 at 17:55

binaryknight said:
cant remember psp off hand but in photoshop could either use the colour replace tool or just up the blue in the colour balance

Upping the colour balance won't work as there is no blue whatsoever in the image. I tried the colour replace but it left some of the pixels around the "hole" with their reddish colouring. Of course I could colour replace each pixel but there are a lot of pixels and it seems an awful lot of work.

Hamish said:
or change the hue

Changing the hue doesn't work either. All I want to do is swap the colour values between the red and blue channels for every pixel.

The easiest thing to do of course is to just fill the hole in and recolour the whole button with a solid colour but there must be a way of doing what I want to do surely?

Scam · 19 Jun 2006 at 18:28

I'm assuming you dont want someone to do it for you... but in PS CS2 i've simply tried doing Image > Adjustments > Replace Colour.

Select the red with the colour dropper thing and set the fuzziness to maximum. Then simply choose the replacement blue you want :confused:

Richard Slater · 19 Jun 2006 at 19:57

In PSP7,

1) load the image
2) colours -> asjust -> hue map
3) move the slider for red to the blue part of the spectrum

Red:

Blue:

phykell · 19 Jun 2006 at 21:16

That's it, on PSP 9 it's "Adjust/Hue and Saturation/Colorize".

Thanks for the help everyone, the option above must have been the only one I hadn't tried

To be honest though, it doesn't give you much control. You don't get to pick the most prevalent colour in the image so you have to do it by eye. I really needed to use the dropper tool to set the main colour to a specific one but hey, it's easier to set the background to suit the button!

I'll have to get a bit more aquainted with PSP, but remember the first paint package I really used was NeoPaint on the Amiga!