How to turn a black shoe into a white one?

[Labienus]

Hello folks,

I have a little problem that bothers me: I cannot make a white shoe out of a black one... I tried and I tried, but it nerver looks realistic. I mean, you see the same thing but different in catalogues (just with clothes), so it can't be too hard - but still, I couldn't find toturials via google either... maybe I am just incompetent to find it?!
Does anyone have any ideas? I would be very grateful!

Labienus

[Belk Media Grp]

When it comes to the colorization of a specific object, turning something from black to white is the most difficult. At the same time, it's not that difficult at all once you learn how to preserve detail and light (highlights & shadows). Once you figure that out just paint the shoe white and place your details on a new layer. I hope this points you in the right direction.

[Jafo]

I saw a tutorial once on turning a black car to a white car. I think the technique involved masking all but the black parts of the car to be changed and then doing some extreme tweaking of the curves adjustment. Beyond that, I can offer no help.

Perhaps if you post a picture of a black shoe that you want altered and we could give it hell and report our findings?

[mistermonday]

Labienus, Welcome to Retouch Pro. A while back there was a thread here at RP where the member was trying to turn a black leather glove to white. I can't recall who posted it and I can not find right now but I will keep looking.
Regards,Murray

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by mistermonday

Labienus, Welcome to Retouch Pro. A while back there was a thread here at RP where the member was trying to turn a black leather glove to white. I can't recall who posted it and I can not find right now but I will keep looking.
Regards,Murray

Here you go Labienus and Murray... This is the "Glove" thread and explains the difficulties and also a couple solutions: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/pho...-possible.html

Good Luck!

[Labienus]

Thanks for the Link!
It helped a lot. I hope I will get where I want to - I will post what I'll have done, when I'm finished.
Thanks again,

Labienus

[mistermonday]

OlBaldy, thanks for finding that thread. I had done a search but must have missed it.
Regards, Murray

[Labienus]

So, now I'm pretty happy with the result it's not perfekt, but for "just for fun" it's enough. Perhaps still a bit too much like silver...
In the attachement are some zip-Files (I think they are self-explanatory).

Now here is what I've done:


First Step: LIGHTNESS

1. I copied one channel (I don't remember wich one, sorry, but I took the one where you can see the Schadows best) as a layer.
2. Then I did some hard level-adjustments: a little bit more black, a bit more white and the arrow in the middle about half the way to the left.
3. After that I inverted and blurred (gassian blur) the layer and saved it as a channel. (You can delete the old gray-scale-layer or just deselect ist - we don't need it anymore)
4. Now, based on the selection of the created channel, I created a Curve. To visualize the curve: alt+click on the curve ( -> the grid gets smaller) and then drag the point in the upper-right corner nearly all over to the upper right corner. The point should be about in the middle of the first little box. To get stronger shadows ,you can drag the poit down a bit - but I don't think, we want that. (see: curve1.jpg)
5. Then I created another curve with the same mask and inverted the mask. It's a little difficult to describe it, I just played a bit, til it looked good enough. (see: curve2.jpg)
6. Now I created another curve with the same mask as the last curve. This one looks like this (see: curve3.jpg)
7. Then I created a Level-Adjustment-Layer and draged the middle-arrow to the right (to 0,90 or so). I did this to make the shoe look less shiny.
8. and another curve for the lightness (curve4.jpg)
9. and now a "Brightness/Contrast"-Adjustmentlayer. I changed the contrast to "-50" and opacity of the layer to 50%. (you could also just change the contrast to "-25" but I think that the picture is a tiny little bit smoother, when you do it the other way.)


Second Step: Bringing Back The DETAILS

Until now there is a white mass without much details. But with the following steps we'll change that:
1. I took the original picture, made a copy and put it on top of all layers.
2. Blend-Mode to "Hard Light"
3. Then I converted this Layer to a Smart Object. I don't know how many programs are able to work with Smart Object, but in this case it's quite helpful.
4. Then I applied the High Pass Filter (to find under Filters -> Others -> High Pass). I took a high number (for my picture I took "30". But you have to try for every picture, because the value depends on how big (in pixels) the image is) to get back the texture of the leather. To get back most of the texture, especially in the dark and light areas, I ignored the creases and seam of the shoe. They are way too hard and dark right now.
5. Then I duplicated the Smart Object and set the opacity of both to 60%. And then I changed the value of the filter of the duplicated Smart Object to a lower number (im my case "9").
6. Then I did some changes in the layer-mask (see: mask1.jpg for the mask of the first Smart Object and mask2.jpg for the mask of the second Smart Object, placed above the first one). In this case both masks are the same, I just inverted one.


Last Step: The COLOUR

Depending on the original picture you need to change the colour a bit. in this picture the shoe is a little bit pink. To get rid of that:
1. I created a new adjustment-layer (Hue/Saturation) to desaturate the picture...
8. To get more colour, so it won't look monochromatic, I created a new adjustmentlayer (Color Balance) and played around til I was happy with the result. After that I decreased the opacity to 75% because I always too much - and sometimes less is more ;-)


So that's, what I've done. It took me about half an hour.
I hope that my result looks realistic (or at least approximate) to anyone else, than me =)

And I want to apologize for any spelling-faults etc. English isn't my first language and I didn't have the time to check... But still, I hope you can understand me and my hotchpotch.

Best Regards,
Labienus

[Labienus]

And here are the before and after pictures.

[mistermonday]

Labienus, you did a great job!
Regards, Murray

[Flashtones]

Nicely done. Color aside, would you mind to share how you changed the shoe style? How you got the stitching to follow the line you created for the new opening?

[Graphics23]

Done in LAB using two curves.

One turned the shoe white, the other increased contrast in the heel.

When you need to change color, nothing beats LAB.

Regards,

Michael

[Labienus]

Originally Posted by Graphics23

Done in LAB using two curves.

One turned the shoe white, the other increased contrast in the heel.

When you need to change color, nothing beats LAB.

Regards,

Michael

Thanks Michael!
Looks much better and easier!
Maybe I should use LAB more often...

Regards,
Labienus

[pixelzombie]

Originally Posted by Graphics23

Done in LAB using two curves.

One turned the shoe white, the other increased contrast in the heel.

When you need to change color, nothing beats LAB.

Regards,

Michael

quite nice..not to nitpick but the left of the shoe is completely blown out

[Graphics23]

Originally Posted by pixelzombie

the left of the shoe is completely blown out

Doesn't get any whiter than that!

[Wolfman]

Originally Posted by Graphics23

Done in LAB using two curves.

One turned the shoe white, the other increased contrast in the heel.

When you need to change color, nothing beats LAB.

Regards,

Michael

Any chance you could describe what you did?

Thanks

[Graphics23]

Originally Posted by Wolfman

Any chance you could describe what you did?

Thanks

I did almost the exact same thing I did in this thread.

Convert to LAB, create curves layer masked to only affect the shoe.

The curves were exactly the same, except that instead of pulling the L channel towards black I pushed it towards white.

[friiskiwi]

I did this one for a friend a while ago.
I selected the bits I wanted to change to white, made a curves adjustments, and then used History Brush set to Screen varying the opacity painting over the 'black". In the end I also used the doge tool set to shadows and 100%

[Flashtones]

I'd still like to know how the shoe style was changed (as shown above in post #9). How does one get the stitching to follow the new line? Do you just copy a short semgent of stitching and repeat it end to end along the line? Is there a lot of blending to be done when doing so?

[Labienus]

Originally Posted by Flashtones

I'd still like to know how the shoe style was changed (as shown above in post #9). How does one get the stitching to follow the new line? Do you just copy a short semgent of stitching and repeat it end to end along the line? Is there a lot of blending to be done when doing so?

Actually it was not that hard. At first I drew a path in the shape I wanted the shoe to be. Then I just took the longest line and copy/paste it. Then I took the transformation tool and changed the new stitching with the warp thing or however it's called. This step I repeated until the stitching had the same shape as my path. For the last two pieces I took another part of the shoe, because the stitching gets smaller in the end. And to let it look a bit more realistic I took parts wich had smaller stitching in the first place.
Then I just needed to mask every piece and do some colour and lightness adjustments
And for the "Fine-Corrctions" I used the liquify-tool to make the shape perfect.

Regards,
Labienus

[Flashtones]

Good of you to share that. Thanks. Excellent job.