Have you ever had a little digital embellishment doodad that you wished came in a different color? You’d do it yourself, but you didn’t know how, right? Fret not; now you can.

Like I mentioned on Monday, I was fumbling around with some digital scrapbooking items this past weekend. After I changed the color of the frames I was working with, I realized “hey, I should share this”. It was such an easy fix, and is something I’ve used before. Don’t know why it didn’t occur to me sooner to write up a Tip Share, but let’s fix that now.

 

What you need:

  • A digital embellishment or clip art of some kind. I’ll be using this Pugly Pixel tape set, which is free for personal or commercial use, in the examples below.
  • Photoshop Elements, or a similar program.

 

Step 1: Open up Photoshop Elements, then open up the digital file you want to re-color.

 

 

Step 2: Go to Enhance > Adjust Color > Adjust Hue Saturation (the keyboard shortcut is CTRL + U). On the menu that appears, click the Colorize box.

 

 

Step 3: Play with the slider bars. Drag them back and forth till you get the colors you want. The top bar (Hue) deals with the color, the middle bar (Saturation) deals with how saturated that color is, and the bottom bar (Lightness) deals with how light that color is.

Quick Tip #1: Saturation deals with how close to gray a color is. If you’re looking to mute a color, or make it less vivid, slide the middle bar to the left.

Quick Tip #2: If you’re wanting to recreate this exact color, I’d make a note of the values that appear. I haven’t figured out a way to easily replicate color with this method.

 

 

Step 4: Once you’re happy with the color, click OK. Then save it under a different file name (to preserve the original).

 

 

Ta-da! Easy, right?

I need to mention that while this is an easy thing to do, simply changing the color doesn’t mean this particular file is now yours and you can use it in any way you want. As with any digital embellishment/clip art, you need to be aware of the original designer’s copyright. I showed you this tutorial with Pugly Pixel’s digital tape, because I knew Katrina offered this as a freebie on her site with minimal restriction. Other digital designers will have other requirements, so it’s probably best to use this Tip Share for your own personal use.

Happy creating!