Photo retouching -how to change this machine...

PhotoShop is the right tool for the job, though Gimp is also an option.

The trick is to mask the areas that you want to change the colour of, and perform the adjustments on that mask.

To get it to look believable, though, is a bit of a skill - with lots of thick books out there that might get you started. I'll gladly have a go at it for you... watch this space.
 
How does this look?

f2d93dffa5.png


(I'm still struggling to get it to look realistic ... plastic is one of those things that is hard to fake. However, this is pretty close.)
 
How the world did you do that? What I did to that same pic came out looking like this.

What did I do to mass up this?
 

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First, I duplicated the whole picture as a new layer. this means that if I make any stoooooopid mistakes I can always go back to that without losing anything.

Next, I used the pen tool to carefully mark around the areas I wanted to change. I turned the paths into a selection, and then I did two things:
- I copied the selection from the first image as a new layer. So now I have a layer that is only the white panels that I want to replace. This may not be needed, but it is useful to have. And ...
- I used the selection to make a Color Adjustment layer.

I played with the adjustment layer until I got pretty close. Then, I brought back my selection from before (magic wand tool), merged the changes to one layer, and used Image->Adjustments->Variations to nudge it to the right levels.

Like I said, its a skill that takes time to learn, and there are HUGE books explaining how to do this sort of thing. Just play around with some of the options, though, and you'll figure out a few tricks.
 
Whatever specific method you use, the key is to use as much of the source image as possible. You'll notice that with Symphonix's method, he did NOT try to recreate the shading — he merely altered the image in such a way that the original shading was not altered.

Camgangrel seems to have painted over the white area completely, losing all the natural shading. That's the big difference between the two alterations.

The trickiest part of this is selecting just the right portion of the image to doctor. A pixel too much or too little, and it'll show in the result. This can be a real pain in the butt, since there are such subtle shadings in photos. I've tried changing people's hair color, and man, it's not easy. :eek: This is something that takes dedicated practice to master.
 
Mikuro, you explained so perfectly what I was trying to get at. Yes, the goal is to keep the shading, shape, and form of the original as much as possible. Hence, my tips on copying the sections you are going to change onto a new layer, so you can use them to "flesh out" the shape.
 
One way to do this: Use the Color mode on your color masks. This keeps the lightness/shading values intact while adding your chosen color. Sometimes Color isn't enough and you have to use Multiply at a certain opacity less than 100% (to your taste).
 
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