editing watch colors in photos

[BlueJason]

My preference for watches is steel and silver color. I still keep some photos/videos of gold watches if they are really good. But I don't know why I never thought of editing the photos to turn the gold watches silver. I got the idea earlier this year and started trying it. It's actually not very hard as long as you are careful. Some come out better than others but these are my most recent edits, most of them I think you never would know the originals were not silver. I haven't tried adding any colors since I only prefer silver. Maybe g-shock fans would be interested in doing that to make red, blue, green, etc. but I think colors would probably be tougher to make look good.

I posted the edits with the originals here, can anyone tell they were edited?

https://imgur.com/a/PLibmD4

[ekorarre]

I enjoy both colors, but the color changes look well done. Great MKs

[Devon]

These edits are great! I really couldn't tell which one was the real pic. As someone who finds gold watches to be a turn-off (something about the contrast to the skin), but really likes silver colored steel and black watches (looks best with a black dial), they went from "Ugh!" to "Oh yeah!" when I went from the gold to the silver version.

[MaximeW]

Hi,

Great job ! I remember that I've ever done it with IceWatch years ago.
Which application are you using for that ?

[BlueJason]

I am just using GIMP because it is free. It's the first image editing I've ever done so I didn't download Photoshop.

The process is pretty simple, I'm sure you can use Photoshop also. Basically I follow these steps:

-Select only the pixels containing the watch with the freehand. If the watch is against a dark background you have some room for error, but against skin / clothes you need to be very careful to not select anything else besides the watch.
-Next you alter the color temperature. Temperature refers to reds/blues and warmth/coolness of the image. By cooling it (making it more blue) then the gold / rose gold lighten up, and you keep more of the lighting on the watch and reflections looking natural. I alter it this way until it looks brighter and more silver/blue without being actually blue.
-Then, I remove color using the Chroma tool. If you immediately start removing color as the first thing you do, it looks more like it was printed in black / white instead of natural. You also should be careful to only remove as much color as necessary, because if you completely remove color, again it won't look natural.
-I do my best to make most of the watch look naturally colored. If there are some spots that are darker / unevenly colored, then I will highlight only those uneven spots by themselves to remove more color. This also prevents it from looking like it was printed in black / white.
-If it doesn't look right I try changing the steps, maybe doing less of the temp and more chroma or opposite, doing the steps twice, etc.

That's basically it, I'm not an artist, I'm sure there's better ways but it works for me.

[MaximeW]

Hello,

Thanks for the answer. I take some time but I tried some possibilities (more flashy than realistic but some results looks classy to my taste cause I turn in that fetish from IceWatch and Gshock)

Only things that is I can't turn full black into light color I sucess now on good resolution pictures to get dark color on thoses watch.
What do you think about that ? Enjoy !

https://imgur.com/a/Cg0kWD3