The "3-Point Curve" Formula to Exact-Match Colors! - Photoshop Tutorial

Hi there, this is Unmesh and welcome to another Fix Imperfect original. Original you might ask? Well, today we're going to talk about curves. That's why. Of course, the one in Photoshop. Don't get too excited. Now, the only other curve that I'm interested in from you is the curve of your smile. Anyway, in this video, I'm going to share with you the three point curve technique to exactly absolutely match the color of one object to the other object using some specific numbers. This is going to be exciting. I'm excited to share this with you. So, without any further ado, let's get started. Back in the mathematical world of Photoshop, and if you want to go ahead and download this photo and follow along, you already know what to do. Check the links in the description. Now, before we begin, I just wanted to quickly thank you from the bottom of my heart because I remember in the last video, I asked you guys to subscribe, those of you who are watching the video, and a lot of you guys did. I cannot express how grateful I am to you for subscribing to this channel and helping these videos reach more people and help more people. So, thank you so much again. Let's say these two are sisters, and we want to match the jacket that she's wearing, the lady in green, to the sweater of the lady in the right. How do we do that? Well, first, we need to sample the color that she's wearing in different areas. One for the highlights, one for the mid-tones, one for the shadows. And then we'll sample the same for the green jacket. And then we'll try to match it using a specific number. First of all, let's create two layers. All right. The top one is always the layer for reference. The bottom one is always the layer for the sample that we're going to target. So, let's name it Target instead. Okay. Now, with the Target layer selected, select the Brush tool, you can select a regular hard round brush, just like this, and then take a sample of the bright area of her jacket. So, I'm just going to take a sample of this particular area. Also, when you're taking a sample, just make sure with the Eyedropper selected, you have 3x3 or 5x5 average. So I'm going to go with 3x3. It's going to simply create a box of 3x3 pixels and take the average color of that. It is essential so that you don't take a point sample. So if you choose Point Sample, if you click somewhere, it can accidentally sample some other color or maybe even sample a noise. We don't want that. So make sure it is 3x3 average so that the colors are consistent. You can even go higher if you want to. But in this case, we have lots of patterns and minute details here. So we do not want to take an average of a larger area. So 3x3 or 5x5 seems all right. For the first one, let's go for a 5x5 and take a sample from right here. Select the brush, hold the Alt key or the Option key, click to take a sample of the bright areas. I'm going to go with this color. So let's just paint right over here. Make the brush a little larger. So this is for the highlights. Okay. For the mid-tones, take a mid-tone color just like this. This works. And this is for the mid-tones. And for the shadow areas, we're just going to go somewhere here and take a sample. And this is for the shadows. All right. We have all three colors there. For the reference, select the reference layer first. And now with her sweater, first, let's change the average to 3x3 because the details are just kind of minute here. Take the brush. I feel like this is a good highlight standard. So let's go with that one. Just overlap the highlights, mid-tones and shadows of the target and paint over there. Now with the mid-tones, I feel this would be a good candidate. Let's paint it right over here. And for the shadows, we can go somewhere here and paint right over here. So now my dear friend, we have it all set. On the left hand side, we have the target and on the right hand side, we have the reference. So we want to make the target the same as the reference. So you want to dial in some numbers, change some properties and settings so that the highlights of the target merge with that of the reference. The mid-tones of the target merges with that of the mid-tones of the reference and so on for the shadow areas. Now to make that happen, if you watch PiXimperfect, you've already guessed what we will do. So just above the target layer, we're going to create a Curves Adjustment layer. But before we do so, we need to make a selection of this jacket because we only want to target that jacket area. So to do that, you can start making a selection with whatever tool you like. You can use the Quick Selection tool. You can use the Magic Wand tool. Whatever you like. I would recommend using the Pen tool. Now this is not a selection class, so I've already made a selection for you. If you want to learn more about making selections and if you want to master masking, do watch this amazing playlist right over here. I'm just going to load the selection by going to Select, Load Selection, and I have it right here. Jacket, hit OK. So that loads that. After that, we're going to create a Curves Adjustment layer so that it comes with a mask which is created from the Active Selection. Select the symbol of the Curves Adjustment layer. Now we're going to go here and we will look at the RGB values of these reference colors. And how can we do that? Well, you can open up the Color Picker and then just click here and note down the RGB values in a piece of paper. One other way is that you can make a copy of the reference and you have to actually place it under the curve for this to work. And then let's open up the Curves Properties. Again, select the hand right over there, hold the Shift key and the Alt key together. You should see the eyedropper with a little crosshair next to it. Now click here. That's Info or the color number one. Let's place it right over there. Click here and click here. Here you have the RGB values of all of these three colors. Let's place the Info right over here so it's convenient for us to see. Now let's get back to the properties of the Curves Adjustment layer. All right. Now here's what we will do. We will select the hand again and according to the RGB values of the target colors, we're going to create anchor points for different channels. So we need to see where does each of these colors fall. So if you go to the red channel right now, if I hover over it, it clearly shows you, all right, that's the position of that particular color and here's for the second one and this one is for the third one. So to do it, go back to the RGB channel, hold the Shift key and the Control key and then click on the first color. All right. Now, if you go to the red channel, see, it'll already make a point for you. I prefer sampling all of them together. So let's get back to the RGB channel. We have already clicked on this one. Again, hold the Shift key and the Control key. Keep on holding that. Click on the second one and click on the third one as well. All right. Make sure it's nicely sampled. Of course, it will be nicely sampled if you click once, but habits from the times when computers needed to be tamed. Anyway, let's go to the red channel. Let's start with the first one. Select the first one. The output is 122. We need to set it to the first sample right here. The first sample value is 212. So from 122, we need to take it to 212. All right. Let's select the second one. What is the value of red for the second example? 136. So let's set it to 136. All right. Let's select the third one. What is the value of red for the third color? 61. Cannot see any change here because the mask is on. So if you want to see the change, hold the Shift key and click on the mask and you will see the change right over here. Let's get back to the properties. And this time, let's go with the greens. So for the first one, the value is 87. Similarly, let's dial down the values of all of these points. Have a look. Both of them are now matching. Now, if you turn off this reference right over there, have a look. Both of them are now so nicely matching. We don't need the info. So this is what we exactly wanted, didn't we? The highlights of the target matches with that of the reference, so does the midtones and the shadows. So now let's zoom out and let's turn off the references and also turn on the mask by holding the Shift key and clicking on the mask. And there you have it, my friend, the exact match right over there. And if you're concerned about these samples, just select the Eyedropper tool, hold the Shift key and the Alt key again, hover over those, a scissor icon is going to show up. Click on that. Click on the second one. Click on the third one. And all of them are now gone. So that's how you exactly match the color of one object to the other using a specific number inside Curves and that is the 3-point Curve technique. I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did, make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just subscribe, ring the bell so that you, my friend, don't miss any other future tips, tricks or tutorials. I would love to take this moment to thank all these nice and amazing people for supporting PiXimperfect on Patreon and helping keep PiXimperfect free for everybody forever. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for giving me your time. I'll see you in my next one. Till then, stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.