03 April 2007

Colour tricks

As I think I've mentioned before, I'm keen to make the Mariah cardigan, but I'm having trouble deciding on which colour and yarn to use. I had a bit of a brainwave just now, and thought I could do some of my graphic designery tricks on the Mariah photo from Knitty (hope this isn't a problem - the original photo is by Peter Zimmerman, and Jodi Green is the model and designer. I can remove this post if there are objections to my using this photo here).

So here is the design in different colours (my approximations according to my Bendigo shade card). I was tending towards the light olive green, but am surprisingly attracted to the Red Tweed, now, actually!

Blue Mix (Bendigo Alpaca)


Elm (Bendigo Rustic) or Pistachio (if a bit lighter) (Bendigo Alpaca)

Red Tweed (Bendigo Rustic)


If anyone wants to know the Photoshop tricks to do this, here's what to do :

Open the image in Photoshop. Select the area to change colour - use the Lasso Tool. This can be a bit fiddly. If you want to try lots of changes, it can be worth putting this selection into a new layer. Go to the Layer Menu > New > New Layer via Cut (Shift Command J) or via Copy (Command J).

Go to the Image Menu > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Command U)

Make sure that Colorize and Preview are ticked. Then use the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders to adjust the colours to your heart's content! Other colour adjustment options are useful too, such as Selective Colour, Colour Balance, and so on. Levels is also useful (Command L).

I'm using Adobe Photoshop CS2, professional version - not sure if lighter-weight versions of Photoshop can do all of these options, but it ought to be able to!

4 comments:

  1. oh what a useful tool! I'm with you on the red tweed. Definitely the way to go. I liked the olive green too until I saw that!

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  2. Oh what fun! I prefer the green, then the blue mix. I'm not much on maroons, but that's just me.

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  3. I am in fact blocking a tension square of 8ply elm at this very moment and its oh-so-loverly. The red tweed is nice and warm....but then the blue mix would suit you too. Hmmmm, that's helpful! My vote is with elm - great with jeans, light enough to show off the cabling.

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  4. I like the blue! : )

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