Fun with Photoshop - Creating Palettes
Amy at happythings has gone and inspired me again with amazing color and some fun tricks with Photoshop. When I saw the photos she had doctored in Photoshop, I just had to try this myself. And let me just say, this is so easy and so addicting — choosing (and limiting) which photos to use was the only hard part!
You can use these photos for so many different things — from wrapping paper to desktop backgrounds. Amy actually got the idea from a quilting magazine that suggested printing out these images onto fabric to make a quilt out of them. Cool!
Want to see how easy this is to do with your own images?
OK, find a photo where you like the color palette and crop it by selecting a very small row of your image with lots of different colors in it (make it around 10 pixels or so wide and the whole height of your image). Easy so far, right? Now for the last step. Yep, just two steps! Now resize your photo and make sure to click off “Constrain Proportions”. You will want to increase the width of your image from the previous 10 or so pixels to 800 or even more.
Below are some photos I’ve tweaked in their before and after states using those two easy steps. I think it is so fascinating to really get into your photos and notice some of the colors that you didn’t even realize were there. Like I said — this is perfect for creating palettes. I am quite fond of this new trick, if you can’t tell!

Farmer’s Market after (top of blog). Farmer’s Market before (directly above).

Manatee before.
And you can even do your images verticle! Here are a couple of my favorites…
Italian sea town from our honeymoon before.
And just for fun . . .

Goofy baby in her party dress before.
Now go out and create some cool palettes out of your own photographs. And if you figure out other cool uses for them, I’d love to hear your ideas!











Responses and Conversations
Ooo - they turned out sooo neat. I love them all but esp. the oranges!!
Comment by Amy on July 9th, 2006 at 12:39 pm
[...] A funky way to create a palette with Photoshop and pretty much any photo you’ve got. Instructions over at Digital Photography Blogs. [...]
Comment by Slide’s Sanctuary » Blog Archive » Funky Photo Smear Tecnique on July 9th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Very cool! Can’t wait to convert some more pics into pretty paper–better go put the kids down for the naps so I can get busy.
Comment by CSzeto on July 19th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
That’s a super-handy trick. I’ve seen tips on using the “Mosaic” filter to create palettes, but I think I like this approach better.
Comment by Bill on June 5th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Thanks, Bill! Yeah, I agree that it’s a cool trick. And it couldn’t be easier!
Comment by Amy Frazier on June 11th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
These are lovely! If they are intended as wrapping paper what size can you go up to and where can you get them printed?
Comment by Liz on February 15th, 2009 at 3:22 am
I think you could go pretty large with the file in photoshop, Liz. As for printing, I’ve yet to print any of these bigger than what my home printer can handle. But I imagine Kinko’s or any printer could easily print these up for you in whatever size you wanted. Would be really cool to say you designed your own wrapping paper to the person receiving your gift, eh?
Comment by Amy Frazier on February 16th, 2009 at 10:09 pm