Selecting colors from a painting

Rebecca from OH, USA, using Photoshop 7 with Windows XP, writes in with:
[Quote:] Hello friend! Here is my challenge: I want to take a watercolor and use exactly those colors to re-colorize some photographs, making fixed colors so that only those colors will be used in the image... is there a tip, trick, plugin, etc? Peace! rebecca

This is more difficult than it sounds...

Two ways to approach this might be the best to start:

1) Get a good digital photo of the watercolor painting and then "pick-up" colors from that image for colorizing the new image.

Observe the Options Bar for the Eyedropper tool. (Tap "i" or "shift/i")
Note the "Sample Size" pull-down. By averaging 3 x 3 or 5 x 5 areas you can "average" color selections and get (sometimes) a better representation of the color you want.

2) Utilize existing color models

Sometimes digital photos and building color on the monitor go astray once you print. Sometimes attempting to 'match' existing, known color models is more accurate.

Get your hands on a PMS color swatch book. (Beg or borrow) With that you can see the actual colors and hold chips up to the painting for a 'daylight' test.

Now set your file to the color space required by the printer or output device, and build the colors (using percentages in your color chooser - click on the foreground color in the tool bar ) into custom swatches in your color palette. These will be the colors to use. (See "Custom Colors ")

Now, if the output device is up to snuff, you should get very close no matter what the monitor says.

TIP: Once you've selected your colors run a "Test Strip" file with squares of the colors through your printer. See if they're close. You may even want to generate some tints (adding white) or shades (adding black) to those colors to give a spectrum.

If the colors are not accurate, you now have a "map" by which you can tweak them to where you want them.

Thanks for writing, and let us know how it turns out -- we'd love to see an example.