The Masters Color Schemes: Match Color Tool in Photoshop

“Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.” – Vincent Van Gogh

Color effects everything in our lives- it can send a positive or a negative message. It can be soothing or it can create a disarming stir. Marketers have know how to manipulate with color for years. When I say Campbells soup can, you most definitely visualized a red soup can and the label. Red excites, it energizes.

The old masters of painting have been studying color and its effects for centuries. Van Gogh sought not to mimic reality but to use colors that let him be more expressive. Why not tap into that hard work and borrow some color schemes from Vermeer or Kandinsky for your next project or personal photography?

With Photoshop’s Match Color Tool you can do just that to all your personal photos. Made to reproduce the colors on a batch of images, finding other cool and useful applications for these tools is what makes Photoshop, or any tool, great!

I borrowed a photo my father took of Charlie running in some fine country air and matched it with a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, Starry Night made in 1889. Here are the simple steps:

Step 1. Find your photos. Create the document with the image you want to match underneath the photo of yours that you want to change.

Step 2. Match the color. With your photo selected go to Image/Adjustment/Match Color. Select the source photo for the matching. Play with the various options and preview it live to get the best effect.

Step 3. Final adjustments. Tweak the colors with some selective color or New Layer Adjustments- go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer and work in some new Curves or Color Balance.

That’s it!

You can take it a step further with this cool tool Hockneyizer. Named for the Polaroid composite/mosaics that British artist David Hockney did with Polaroid film in the 80′s.

Or-

Go back to the fine museum creator at http://www.dumpr.net/museumr.php and insert your new color enhanced photo into a museum template of your choice. I took my post on creating your own major museum exhibit a step further with this one and had the master himself, Pablo Picasso work on the final touches of the Charlie pic.