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Changing the Colors of a Template
Let's say you find a template that only comes in red, green, or blue. You really like the
design and layout, but you really need it in pink since that's the primary color used on
your website. Instead of settling for one of those three available colors, you can
purchase the template and use the instructions below to change it to the color you need (in
this example, pink).
There are several ways to go about this, and the way you choose depends on what software you have available.
If you own or have access to a copy of Adobe Photoshop, you can change the color scheme of
a template using the template's PSD files.
- Open the template's PSD file in Adobe Photoshop. In this example, notice we are using the blue version
of the template.
- Select the first layer in the layer list.
- Click on the New Adjustment Layer button at the bottom of the layer list. A submenu will appear with a number of
choices. Click Hue/Saturation...
- A dialog like the one below will appear. There are three sliders that let you control the overall color of the template.
Hue changes the actual shade of color, saturation changes the intensity of the colors, and lightness changes
the brightness of the colors. Move the Hue slider around until the color of the template matches what you want.
In this example, we want to make the blue part of the template pink to fit our color scheme. Once you find the desired
color, click OK.
The color of the template has now been changed (as shown below). However, since you are working with the PSD file
you will need to resave the PSD's slices to update the template's GIF/JPEG images. For instructions on
how to do this, please refer to
this guide.
If you use Paint Shop Pro, you can change the color scheme of a template by changing
the color of the individual GIF/JPEG images. However, since you'll probably not want
to have to go through and change the color of each image manually, the instructions
below show you how to use Paint Shop Pro's scripting ability to quickly change
the colors of multiple images.
- Open one of the template's JPEG or GIF image files. Pick one of the bigger ones that include
several of the colors used in the template. In this example, we're picking the template's header
image.
- Next we need to tell Paint Shop Pro to record everything we do next so we can have it
repeat it later for us automatically on the other images. Go to File / Script / Start Recording.
Nothing will happen, but don't worry -- PSP is now recording your actions to a script.
- Go to Adjust / Hue and Saturation / Hue Saturation Lightness...
- A dialog like the one below will appear. There are three sliders that let you control the overall color of the template.
Hue changes the actual shade of color, saturation changes the intensity of the colors, and lightness changes
the brightness of the colors. Move the Hue slider around until the color of the template matches what you want.
In this example, we want to make the blue part of the template pink to fit our color scheme. Once you find the desired
color, click OK.
- Go to File / Save As.... If you are not working with a JPEG image, skip the next step. Otherwise. click Options....
- On the Save Options dialog, move Compression Factor the slider all the way to the left then click OK.
- Click Save. You may be asked if you want to overwrite the existing file, in which case click OK.
- Go to File / Close to close the image you just saved.
- Go to File / Script / Save Recording to tell Paint Shop Pro to stop recording your actions. You will
be presented with a Save As dialog box. Navigate to the Scripts-Trusted folder (found in the Paint Shop Pro
folder), enter a name for the script (in this example we chose Change Color) and click Save.
- The script you just saved tells Paint Shop Pro to change the color of an image to pink, save the image, and then
close it. You can now have Paint Shop Pro automatically repeat this entire procedure on the rest of the template's images.
To do this, go to Batch / Process.
- A Batch Process dialog box will appear. Navigate to the folder containing the template images and select
all of the images except the one you originally changed. Also, exclude the file named spacer.gif if it exists.
- Click Browse and select the script you saved earlier (in this example, Change Color) and click OK.
- Under the Save Mode area, select the Overwrite radio button.
- Click Start.
- Paint Shop Pro will now run the script you just created on all of the images you selected. You will see
a status dialog box like the one below.
If you view the template's HTML file in your web browser you should see the template in its new color scheme (as shown below).
The script went through and automatically repeated the steps you followed earlier to change the color of the other images.
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