How to Change Black into Any Color in Photoshop

How to Turn Black into Any Color in Photoshop

This Quick Tip recolors a solid black object, lifting it out of pure black with a masked Levels adjustment first, then applying Hue/Saturation so it can actually take on a new hue.

Converting to a Smart Object First

Right-clicking the layer and converting it keeps the adjustments that follow editable, so the brightening, shadow, and color work can all be revisited later without redoing any of it from scratch.

Isolating the Black Object with the Lasso

Pressing L selects the Lasso tool, used here to draw a rough selection around just the black object that’s being recolored, leaving the rest of the photo untouched.

Subtracting to Refine the Selection

Switching the Lasso to subtract mode removes any extra area that shouldn’t be included, trimming the selection down until it covers just the black object and nothing else.

Masking a Levels Adjustment to the Selection

With that selection active, adding a layer mask to a new adjustment layer confines everything that follows to just the black object, leaving the rest of the image unaffected.

Brightening Highlights and Midtones

The highlights and midtones are brightened first, since a color can’t show up on something that’s rendered as pure black. Lifting these tones gives the object enough underlying brightness for a hue to actually become visible on it.

Working Inside the Masked Selection

Because the adjustment is masked to just the black object, brightening it this aggressively has no effect on the rest of the photo, which stays exactly as it was.

Darkening Shadows for Realism

After brightening the highlights and midtones, the shadows are darkened back down. Without this step the object would look flat and washed out; darkening the shadows restores a believable sense of depth and fabric folds once color is added.

Adding a Hue/Saturation Adjustment

With the object no longer pure black, a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, opened with CTRL + U on a PC or CMD + U on a Mac, is added above it to introduce the actual color change.

Adjusting the Hue

The Hue slider is moved to whatever color the object should become, whether that’s red, olive, purple, or any other shade, now that there’s enough tonal range underneath for the color to register clearly.

One Slider, Many Outcomes

The same masked setup can be pushed to any point on the Hue slider, which is why this technique works equally well for turning the object red, olive, or purple, as shown across the comparison photos, without changing anything else in the process.

Keeping Saturation Low

Saturation is kept relatively low rather than pushed to a fully vivid color, since a formerly black object rarely reads as realistic in a bright, highly saturated hue; a more muted saturation level keeps the new color believable against the rest of the photo.

Revisiting the Levels Adjustment

Double-clicking back into the earlier Levels adjustment reopens it for further tuning, letting the highlight, midtone, and shadow balance be refined again after seeing how the final color actually looks.

More Free Photoshop Tutorials

• Photoshop Basics: Change Black to Any Color
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Why This Technique Works

Hue/Saturation can’t introduce color into a pixel that’s rendered as pure black, since there’s no brightness for a hue to attach to. Brightening the object with Levels first, then restoring some shadow depth for realism, is what makes the object capable of holding a new hue at all, and keeping saturation modest afterward is what keeps that new color from looking artificial.

Final Thoughts

Turning a black object into any other color comes down to sequencing: lift it out of black with a masked Levels adjustment, rebuild some shadow depth, then apply Hue/Saturation with the saturation kept in check, so the final color looks like it belongs in the photo rather than pasted on top of it.

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