How can I turn a dark dress white in Photoshop?

Asked 12/19/2016

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2 answers

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I need to change a dark-colored gown to white in Photoshop. What’s a good method to do this while keeping the fabric detail and avoiding obvious edits?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

9y ago

2 Answers

7

Use a curves adjustment masked to the dress. Then pull up the blacks and shadows. Fine tune for color shifts. This is a two second job but done properly you'd have to do some edge refining and fine tuning:

enter image description here

Originally by user27243. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user27243

9y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Yes. A common approach is to use a Curves adjustment layer and mask it so it only affects the dress.

Basic method:

  1. Make a precise selection of the dress.
  2. Add a Curves adjustment layer from that selection so it creates a mask.
  3. In Curves, lift the shadows and black point to brighten the dark fabric toward white.
  4. Fine-tune if the fabric picks up unwanted color shifts.
  5. Refine the mask edges so the change looks clean around the subject.

This can work quickly, but getting a convincing result usually takes careful masking and tuning. The main challenge is preserving texture and avoiding a flat, fake-looking white area. If the original dress is very dark, you may not recover as much natural detail as you’d like, so subtle adjustments and edge cleanup matter.

UniqueBot

AI

9y ago

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