One of my favorite things about digital scrapbooking is the ability to change the color of a paper, alpha or embellishment to suit my layout. I also love the ability to enhance the colors in my photos to suit a layout better.

I use two tools constantly when creating layouts, the Change To Target Tool and the Hue/Saturation Tool, both are found on the Tools Bar.

First I wanted to change the color of a Word Art to suit my layout. The yellow in the word art is too bright, I would like it more red-orange.

The most common way to recolor this is to select it and use the Paint Bucket to fill the selection. To select more than one area hold the Shift key as you click each area.

This is okay, but I lost the detail that I really liked. I undid the fill with CTRL+X, and leaving the words of "Discovery" selected, activated my Change To Target Tool. I set my foreground color and dragged the brush over the words. It’s better, but I still lost some of the detail.

CTRL+Z again to undo, and with it still selected, Selections> Promote Selection To Layer, and drag the Change To Target brush over the Promoted layer. I now used the Blend Modes to change the promoted layer to keep the variation in color but also maintain the red-orange that I added; Hard Light is the one I liked best. I also selected "The JOY" and changed them to a medium red-orange in the conventional method used in the first example.

I also wanted to recolor a paper that I really like, as it’s blue and I need it to be red-orange, so I used the Change To Target brush on the paper.

Next, I wanted to enhance my photo. It’s one I love, but is a bit washed out looking. I opened it, duplicated it and closed the original.

I activated my Hue/Saturation Tool, and with a medium brush, I brushed over the areas I wanted to enhance, in this case my daughter and the foliage in the background. To increase hue/saturation, hold the left mouse key while you brush; to decrease, hold the right mouse key.

I also used this technique for the flowers I added to the bottle. The left flower is unchanged, the center is enhanced and the third I selected the blue flowers only to enhance.

Layout by Dee-Ann Decker
larger view

	Note: Commercial license versions of ScrapSimple Paper Templates: Jen - Edges and Textures, ScrapSimple Tools-PSP Script: Assemble Layered Templates - Rectangle 7502, ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Bottles and Buds and Edging Brushes 3-Soft are also available.

Tutorial written by Dee-Ann Decker