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Photoshop Tips: Match Color

This photoshop tips section looks at the Match Color adjustment tool that is incredibly useful if you are trying to copy the feel of another image or perhaps a classic painting.

I recently did a photoshoot in a medieval wattle-and-daub house with a set of suitable props aiming to re-create a scene from the middle ages.

Apart from the fact that it was the middle of December and the poor model was freezing, the shoot itself was pretty successful.

However for the final image I wanted to create something that had the feel of a painting - in fact it was the model who set me thinking because when she first arrived, she said the house had the feel of a Vermeer painting.

Here is the final image, and the steps taken to get there are shown below.

Step by Step Match Color...

This is the shot I chose to work on, pretty much as it came out of the camera (it has had a slight vignette effect added and the skin airbrushed).

My next step was to search on the internet for a suitable Vermeer painting, and I chose "The Milkmaid" (below)

With both of these pictures open in Photoshop, I selected my nude and chose Match Color... from the Image->Adjustments menu.

The dialog that opens is remarkably simple to use.

Firstly select the donor image (vermeer milkmaid in this case) as the Source, then adjust the intensity of the color and overal luminance (brightness) of the picture result using the sliders above.

If the color is too strong, you can use the Fade slider to reduce the effect.

Once the match color effect had been applied I did a final Levels adjustment in Photoshop to darken the image a little, which enhance the feeling of an old painting.

I would like to give a shout out to the unfocused brain article on improving your photography with classic art which tipped me off to this technique in the first place.

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