More Color Choice

Author: chupa

Tools Needed

* DAZ\Studio

* Photoshop

Have you ever had a great piece of clothing or armor that you loved the texture but wanted to change the color, say to a light blue, so off you go to your surfaces menu you change the diffuse color. Lo and behold the item in question gets darker and the color is NOT what you wanted, this is because the texture that came with the item already has a color added to it, so by adding the color you want all you're really doing is altering the already existing color. Well this is how you can fix that, and bring greater options to your color choices from now on.

I just recently got a really nice High Fantasy outfit for V3, I love the texture on the breast plate.

Yet when I went to change the color to a light blue, I got this monstrosity.

As you can see the only part of the breast plate that went to the color I wanted was the medallion on the front, a challenge? Well I set off to fix this, and on finding a way I decided to share the process with the community.

First what you want to do is load that dreaded item that you want to change (I'm using the Edana Breast Plate) now go to your surfaces menu, if you don't already have this docked somewhere, go to 'VIEW', 'TABS', then 'SURFACES' feel free to move this off to one side if you want.

Once that is open highlight the part of the item you want to change (some items have several parts) as I have in the above image and then click the advanced tab, just below 'DIFFUSE COLOR' there will be a drop down menu that has the applied texture listed (circled in red).

Click this and select the option 'BROWSE FOR IMAGE', what this will do is take you directly to the folder that holds all the textures for this item.

Find the name of the texture that was listed under 'DIFFUSE COLOR' (in my case it's Dplate), right click on this then select 'OPEN WITH' and choose your favorite graphics program, I happen to be using Photoshop so I'll explain the steps for this program, but almost any graphics program will have the same options.

Once you have the image open, go to 'IMAGE', 'MODE', then 'GREYSCALE'.

You should get a pop up like the following image asking if the color information should be discarded, just click OK.

Now go to 'IMAGE', 'ADJUSTMENTS', then 'BRIGHTNESS/CONTRAST', move the contrast slider to the right as far as you can without losing too much detail (this will vary from item to item) I set mine to +85.

Once that is completed, under the 'FILE' menu select 'SAVE AS' (NOT, I repeat NOT 'SAVE')

Now make sure you enter a name you will know (I called mine DplateLIGHT) and save the image as a jpeg.

If you are using Photoshop you'll be asked what quality to save the image at select 'MAXIMUM' from the drop down menu and click OK.

Now that's done close your graphics program go back to DAZ/STUDIO, open the surfaces menu again, 'VIEW', 'TABS', then 'SURFACES'. Now highlight the item you wanted to change, click on the drop down button under 'DIFFUSE COLOR' (red circled button in following image)

Now select 'BROWSE FOR IMAGE' and open the image that you just made, now back in the surfaces menu just above where your new texture is listed, click the strip with the 3 numbers in it and pick the color of your choice, ahh now isn't that better.

I really hope you can find some use for this information, I tell you it's opened up a great many possibilities for me, which have helped to provide inspiration for me to create.

Thanks for your time, now get out there and explore the possibilities!

Chupa