Adjusting Colour

[elaine21]

Good afternoon,

I have a query about adjusting colour please in PSE 18.  I've taken some images today of a field of sunflowers.  We have had some great weather here recently and the sun has bleached the leaves to a very light green.  The main colours, you can guess, in the images are green and yellow, green background from trees and hedges, and some sky.

I'd like to darken the green of the foilage of the plants, without it affecting the yellow of the sunflower heads.  I've no experience of doing any other colour editing apart from, lighten, darken, increase or decrease saturation so I am a bit stuck here.  And the 'Adjust Hue/Saturation' menu confuses me a little.  I've shot the image in RAW and open and edit a little in Adobe Camera Raw.  I'm not sure what else I can do.

I would be very grateful if anyone could help?

Very many thanks

Elaine

[pontiac1940]

Elaine
Whether you shoot raw or jpeg, you can open either format in ACR which might be helpful for adjusting the hues and color values. (File >>> Open in Camera RAW...)
The main ones I fiddle with (my fave word here) are temperature, tint, vibrance and saturation. Then open in PSE and if parts of the photo are too "yellow," then the yellow can be desaturated in PSE 18.  
Clive

[fotofrank]

Hi and Welcome Elaine,

You can add a Hue and Saturation adjustment layer and select the individual colors that you would like to adjust. All adjustment layers come with a mask so you can target where you want the effect to take place.

[Sepiana]

Sept 13, 2020 16:53:15 GMT elaine21 said:

I'd like to darken the green of the foilage of the plants, without it affecting the yellow of the sunflower heads.  I've no experience of doing any other colour editing apart from, lighten, darken, increase or decrease saturation so I am a bit stuck here.  And the 'Adjust Hue/Saturation' menu confuses me a little.

Hi Elaine, welcome to PSE&M!  Glad to have you here with us.

fotofrank already got you going in the right direction about using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. (Thanks, Frank!) I'm just following on his steps and adding more information.

When the Hue/Saturation dialog opens up, the color channel will be set to Master by default; any adjustments you make will affect all the colors in your image. If you want to adjust individual colors. i.e., green, yellow, you need to choose the appropriate channel (as shown in Frank's screenshot).

For more information on this technique, you may want to check . . .

Make hue/saturation Photoshop Elements adjustments to change colors easily

[elaine21]

Hi again and thank you for the welcome.
I think the adjustment layer looks the way to go, thank you. It looks way over my head but I'm going to read all the information and watch the video and have a play with a draft image and see if I can get what I'm looking for. I think it's the hue part I get confused with, that bar with the spectrum of colours on it, I'm not sure what to drag where to get what, if that makes any sense.
But, I'm going to persevere, I'll let you know how I get on, maybe post a before and after piccy.

Thanks you
Elaine

[Sepiana]

Elaine, you are most welcome!  If you have any more questions about this adjustment layer, please, post back.  Help is only one post away!

Sept 13, 2020 18:56:41 GMT elaine21 said:

 I think it's the hue part I get confused with, that bar with the spectrum of colours on it, I'm not sure what to drag where to get what, if that makes any sense.

Yes, it can be quite confusing. See if this tutorial will help you. 

NOTE: This tutorial was written for an earlier PSE version but it will apply to the version you have (2018).

Photoshop Elements > Layers > Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer > Color Slider

[fotofrank]

Elaine for the most of your edits - step away from the hue slider. The hue slider is a great tool to change the color, like from yellow to blue - not to others shade of yellow. The Saturation and Lightness sliders should be all you need to use.

You may want to check under Enhance on the top menu as it has a few Auto correct settings.

[elaine21]

Thank you Sepiana, the explanation of the hue slider makes sense to me now, it is rather fiddly. And yes Fotofrank it takes some work. To be honest, I think I've set myself an impossible task. I used the adjustment layer and got a nice green, from adjusting the yellow. Adjusting the green didn't do anything at all. So being a field of sunflowers, well, you get my drift. And the amount of greenery, light greenery, well then trying to pick back all the yellow would be pointless.

As someone said above, I don't normally tend to edit my images to an inch within their life. So I think I'll leave it just as God created it, with a little bit of PSE help as well
A very good learning experience though, I'd never encountered that before though I've heard of adjustment layers and masks, I didn't know what they were or used for so thank you. I look forward to getting to know you all here and learning more.

Time for bed, night night x