Turning a white backdrop into a color one?

Question

I have a roll of white seamless that I use for some studio work that works fine when doing more neutral shots, but I'm looking to do something a bit brighter and require a color backdrop. However, I'm not quite ready to purchase a new backdrop so I was wondering if anyone has any techniques for easily shifting the hue of only the backdrop either in real time or in the editing process. I understand how to use Lightroom and Photoshop and I know I could, in theory using an adjustment layer with a mask around my subject, but I was looking for a more exact and possibly less time consuming technique.

Answer 1

There are a few ways you could quickly and easily achieve this in Lightroom and/or Photoshop using masks and layers, but I will provide what I've found to be the quickest and easiest first option.

Range Masking in Lightroom Tutorial:

1.) Create a graduated filter outside of the image, so that the entire photo is affected equally by your mask.

2.) Bring the Saturation slider to 0.

3.) Below all of the filter sliders, you will find a box that just says "Color." Click this and use the dropper to select your color, then use the Saturation slider below to fine tune your selection.

*This will apply the color to the entire photo, meaning we now need to refine our selection to affect only our backdrop.

4.) Underneath this "Color" box we've just selected, you will have an option that says "Range Mask". Click this and choose "Color."

5.) Using the eye dropper, select the color you wish to change (in this case, click on your backdrop).

*Tip: You can also click and drag the dropper over a portion of the backdrop for more precision, or press Shift and select ANOTHER area of color if you wish to affect multiple colors.

6.) Click and drag the "Amount" slider towards 0 to decrease the tolerance for that color, making a more precise selection.

Tip: Use the "O" hotkey with your mask selected to see what is being affected more visibly. If there are small areas that need to be added or removed from your Range Mask, press Shift+T to bring up the brush tool within your filter. Now brush to add areas that were missed, or click Erase in the brush options to begin REMOVING areas that we do not want to be affected.

I hope this helps!

PS: This can also be done in identical fashion in Photoshop by going to "Filters" --> Camera Raw Filter