changing colour of dark brick to white

[P_fuzz]

trying my way around this wall, would like to give a white painting instead of dark grey.

tried using selective colour on screen mode, but it gives me a really faint white layer... almost like I had coated the wall with water diluted paint, which is kinda cool but not what I am looking for.

[KTG]

My rendition may be much like the one you attempted, but here is my work flow: I did a frequency separation with a 25 pixel blur on the low freq layer. I put a white layer clipped to the low freq layer and with a layer mask, painted black @ 5% over the bricks.

k

[zeeakawanted]

Whole procedure / PSD file: http://www.mediafire.com/?ggmtjn370xolc8a

Good luck!

[P_fuzz]

it seems, transforming something dark to bright is the hardest thing. I will get back at it later, or come to terms with it!

thanks for the attempts

[Repairman]

If the wall is painted with solid whitewash the shape will be defined by shadows cast under the individual bricks. There's no point in trying to colourise the face of the bricks: in reality all you'd see is pitting and crazing marks (local lighting conditions notwithstanding). Use Variations to lighten the image. Up the contrast of the cement as best you can and in channels click the selection icon. You won't see much of the dancing ants but the info is there. Wipe the background to white and use the selection as a mask for levels, exposure or whichever suits you to pull back the detail. You can also repeat the selection, offset it by a brick shadows distance and this will enhance the depth effect.
Here is a rough idea which took minutes, the darker bricks I would treat individually....

[BillFrey]

I gave it a try using the emboss filter.

[Repairman]

Blending Bill's with mine gives a nice effect - you can selectively restore/remove texture to suit your ambient lighting.

[SilvaFox]

You could try replacement color

[moroj82]

make the reds as dark as you can, desaturate, invert and play with blending modes.
the background on my website used to be black w/ a blue cast.

[ApWizard]

I think that a short way to go could be replacing the entire brick wall.

[P_fuzz]

Originally Posted by BillFrey

I gave it a try using the emboss filter.

very interesting approach!!! I tried and am quite happy with it!!!


may I ask you how you got to that solution?

[BillFrey]

Hi P_fuzz,

I've been reading about frequency separation and previously about Ro's degrunge and have been thinking about uses other than beauty retouching.

A while back someone suggested using the emboss filter for sharpening very blurry photos.

I have huge brick fireplace and have been considering painting it and visualizing how it would look white.

Add all the above thoughts together... and I tried it here.

Glad it will work for you.

Regards

[Chain]

I would listen to Repairman and Bill posts.

Bill's idea of using Emboss is excellent. What we want is to throw away all the color and brightness variations on the bricks, and just have it defined by how the light hits the "bumps" of the surface. Emboss does this for us. The filter slider allows us tweak how bumpy the bricks look. Looking at the original wall, it was actually quite smooth.
Blending with what Repairman did, we can make the "deeper" bricks slightly darker.
The downside is that any shadows cast onto the wall has to be painted back in as they are removed by the emboss-filter.

We beware making the wall too bright compared to the rest of the Photo (in other words, it is probably not so bright it starts clipping... Also, we will have to adjust the white balance/color to match the light in the rest of the Photo.

[RobertAsh]

This is a wonderful thread, very helpful. I have a portrait that includes a black posing table I've been wondering how to turn white or very light gray. Will try some of these approaches.

[P_fuzz]

thanks for all the tips and suggestions...

I took the right approach and painted the actual studio wall to desired colour to avoid any headaches in future shoots... and it brightened up the atmosphere a whole deal in here!

[Chain]

Originally Posted by P_fuzz

I took the right approach and painted the actual studio wall (...)

That sure looks more realistic than any photo manipulation I'm capable of!

[Repairman]

Hey Fuzz, that's cheating - good idea though!

[0lBaldy]

LOL... Gives a new meaning to... White paint, using Soft brush in overlay mode.....

[P_fuzz]

it was indeed a soft roller brush, small diameter and full opacity!

the mode was whatever listening to Stooges and MC5 gets you to... in my case, restlessness!


but yes, I am building up my studio... in search of the perfect natural soft daylight (idea is to get Vermeer jealous) will update a pic here once is ready!

[P_fuzz]

quick test done today

[julianmarsalis]

A great post on changing black color to lighter color http://www.modelmayhem.com/po.php?thread_id=737622