Color Replacer drops selected color for replacement

[Murf Oscar]

Sure this will have been raised many times. Searched for 'color replacer' and 7 items were found; unfortunately they did not seem to address my issue, so here goes ....

For family history purposes, wish to improve the legibility of some hand written 1930 telegrams; the ink has faded with time so I want to change its colour to black. The form printing has not faded.

The user guide draws attention to the fact that the color selected for replacement must be in the image. Using the Dropper tool with sample size 1 pixel I position the dropper where I want it, see the color in the preview window, then right-click and the selected color appears in the background window on the Materials panel. So far, so good. I then place the Dropper tool over black in the swatch on the Materials panel, click and black appears in the Foreground window of the Materials panel. I think I'm set.

When I select the Color Replacer tool the background window immediately reverts to another color, usually white.

Incidentally, the user guide suggests you read up on selecting colors with the Dropper; when you do this you learn that its OK to pick colors from the Materials panel.

So I think I'm following the user guide but its not working for me. Any suggestions? Thank you.

[Murf Oscar]

Regret omitting from my original post that I use Coral PS Photo Pro X3. Also have the slow load problem that others have mentioned; any news on this?

Thank you.

[LeviFiction]

This is a fun one. I somewhat think there would be a better way to go about what you're trying to do with different tools and options, but I haven't seen the image so I can't say for sure. What I can do, however, is offer some advice for picking colors with this tool.

Normally when you select colors they maintain themselves across tools. Unless you have the "All Tools" option deselected. When that is deselected then each tool maintains the last color set that was used with it. A great way to maintain the difference between the various brushes and such.

However, some tools seem to be the exception to this rule and maintain their colors anyway. I don't know why. Well that's not entirely true, if you select the color replacer brush, then select the eye-dropper tool, when you go back to the color replacer brush it will keep the colors you've chosen this time around. But you have to start from the brush.

There is another way that you might enjoy better.

To select the colors use a very simple trick which is available to all brushes. First grab the color replacer brush and then hold down the CTRL key. The brush will change to the eye-dropper tool. Select the color then release the CTRL key and it'll change back into the brush.

[teknisyan]

I would assume that you scanned the pictures and you now want to somewhat restore them. Like what Levi, since we have not seen the photos, any suggestion is just hit or miss.

You may want to take a look at this tutorial -- http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index. ... id=1500586

[Kathy_9]

A quick trick that might work is to duplicate the image and change the blend mode to multiply on the top layer to bring back the faded handwriting. But as others have said it's hard to know without seeing the image.

[LeviFiction]

Another option would be to use the Threshold Adjustment Layer. And adjust the value until most of the text is visible. Then change the blend mode of the adjustment layer to something like Soft Light and that might ever so slightly increase the readability of the text. Then again, maybe not.

[Murf Oscar]

My thanks to all for your contributions.

Used the Alt key approach; before and after images are attached.

A reminder of how far messaging has improved in 80 years!

Thanks again!