Change the Color of Plants & Foliage in Photoshop

How to Change the Color of Flowers and Plants in Photoshop

Recoloring plants and flowers is a quick, high-impact artistic effect — here, matching greenery and blooms to the colors already present in a subject’s clothing, using two targeted Hue/Saturation adjustment layers and a group-level mask to keep the effect off the subject’s skin.

Targeting the Green with Hue/Saturation

Rather than shifting every color in the photo, Hue/Saturation can be pointed at just one specific color range.

1. Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

   Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation.

2. Target the Greens

   Instead of leaving the target set to Master, click the dropdown, choose Greens, then use the eyedropper to click directly on the plant color you want to change — this automatically fine-tunes exactly which shade of green gets targeted.

3. Shift the Hue to Match Your Subject

   Drag the Hue slider until the plant color matches a color already present elsewhere in the photo — the subject’s clothing, in this case.

Why Target a Specific Color Instead of Master

Leaving Hue/Saturation set to Master shifts every color in the image simultaneously, which is rarely what you want for a selective recolor like this. Targeting Greens specifically, and refining it further with the eyedropper, means the Hue slider only ever touches the plant color you clicked on, leaving skin tones, sky, and every other color in the photo completely untouched.

Widening the Range with the Falloff Sliders

A single eyedropper click won’t always capture every shade of green in a plant, especially one with a lot of tonal variation.

4. Check for Missed Areas

   Toggle the adjustment layer’s visibility off and on and look for any green areas that weren’t affected by the hue shift.

5. Widen the Color Range

   Drag the small triangular falloff handles on the color range bar at the bottom of the panel outward, to the left and right, to include a broader range of similar greens in the effect.

Manually Painting Color Where the Adjustment Misses

Even after widening the range, a few small spots may still resist the Hue/Saturation adjustment, and those are easiest to just paint by hand.

6. Create a New Layer and Sample Your Target Color

   Add a new layer, press B for the Brush tool, and hold Alt on PC (Option on Mac) to sample the color you’re matching to.

7. Paint Over the Missed Area

   Paint directly over the stubborn spot with your sampled color.

8. Set the Layer’s Blend Mode to Color

   Change the new layer’s blending mode from Normal down to Color, near the bottom of the list, so the paint only affects hue and saturation while preserving the original texture and shading underneath.

Why Color Blend Mode for Manual Painting

Painting at Normal blend mode would flatten out all the natural shading and texture of the leaf or petal underneath. Color mode applies only the hue and saturation of your painted color while leaving the original luminosity intact, so a hand-painted touch-up blends in with the automated Hue/Saturation work instead of looking like a flat patch of paint.

Recoloring the Flowers with a Second Adjustment Layer

The same targeted approach works for a second color elsewhere in the photo — the flowers, in this case.

9. Add Another Hue/Saturation Layer

   Repeat the process with a second Hue/Saturation adjustment layer.

10. Target the Flower Color

    Set the target to Yellows (or whichever range matches your flowers), use the eyedropper to click on the flower color, and shift the Hue to match another color from your subject’s clothing.

Masking the Effect Off Your Subject

Targeted color ranges can still bleed onto areas you didn’t intend to change, especially skin tones that share hues with your target colors.

11. Group Your Color Layers

    Select both Hue/Saturation adjustment layers (and any manual paint layers) and group them together with Ctrl + G on PC (Cmd + G on Mac).

12. Add a Mask to the Group

    Click the Add Layer Mask icon on the group itself, rather than on each individual layer.

13. Paint Black Over the Subject

    Press B for the Brush tool, set your color to black, and paint over your subject — especially their skin — to hide the recoloring effect everywhere it shouldn’t apply.

Why Mask the Group Instead of Each Layer

Masking the group once, rather than adding and painting an identical mask on every individual adjustment layer, means one pass of painting protects the subject from every color effect inside that group at once. Add a third or fourth recolor layer later, and it’s automatically covered by the same group mask without any extra work.

Why This Approach Works

This effect works because each Hue/Saturation layer is scoped to one narrow color range rather than the whole image, which is what allows two completely different recolors — plants shifted one way, flowers shifted another — to run independently on the same photo without interfering with each other. Manually painting the rare missed spot in Color blend mode extends that same targeted logic to places the automatic tool couldn’t fully reach, without ever risking the original texture underneath. And masking the whole group at once, rather than each layer separately, keeps the workflow scalable: any additional color layer added later inherits the same protection over the subject with zero extra masking work.

Final Thoughts

Matching plant and flower colors to a subject’s outfit is a small effect, but it’s a good demonstration of how targeted, layered adjustments beat one broad edit — each Hue/Saturation layer does exactly one job, the manual touch-up covers what the automated tool missed, and a single group mask keeps everything contained to the right area. The same targeted-color-plus-group-mask approach applies just as well to recoloring anything else in a photo that has a distinct, isolatable color range of its own.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Add the adjustmentLayer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation
• Target one colorProperties: click Master, choose Greens (Yellows for the flowers), click the color with the eyedropper, drag Hue
• Catch missed greensDrag the range sliders on the color bar at the bottom of the panel outward
• Paint missed spotsNew layer, B, Alt/Option-click to sample, paint, blend mode: Color
• Group the color layersCmd/Ctrl + G
• Protect the subjectLayer mask icon on the group, B, paint black over the skin, arm and hand

No AI, no generative credits.