One of the best things about digital scrapbooking is the ability to change the color of any element to match a digital scrapbooking layout you are working on. In this tutorial, I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to recolor digital scrapbooking ribbon.

First, you are going to need to have open both your element that needs to be recolored along with the paper to which you are going to match the color.

Next, take your Eyedropper Tool and select the color from the paper that you want to change your element to. You will notice the foreground color has now changed from black to the shade of blue I picked.

Next, you are going to change the color of your ribbon by choosing Enhance> Adjust Color> Adjust Hue/Saturation.

After you click Adjust Hue/Saturation, another box will pop up. In the lower right corner is the word "Colorize" and a box in front of that. Click the box and that will automatically adjust your ribbon to a shade of blue close to what you originally picked.

Now at this point you can adjust your Hue/Saturation to get your element closer to the color you are wanting. What you do not want to adjust too much though is the "Lightness" level. While this will lighten/darken your element, it will also lose a lot of the quality and texture of the element.

Here's an example of an element adjusted too lightly. Notice the lack of texture and detail to the element.

Once you get your element close to your color, there is an easy way to adjust the lightness and darkness. First you will need to create a duplicate layer. To do this choose Layer> Duplicate Layer. When a box pops up, click "OK."

To darken the ribbon, make sure the duplicate layer is active and change the Blend Mode to "Multiply."

Your element will now be a darker shade and you can adjust the Opacity of the duplicate layer to lighten the element.

The same works to lighten the recolored element. Create your duplicate layer and this time change the Blend Mode of your layer to "Screen." Then by moving the Opacity level, you can darken the element up some.

Once you have got the color you desire, merge your layers and you have a recolored element ready to use.

*Tip: Duplicating the layer and changing the Blend Mode to either "Screen" or "Multiply" will also work very well on photos you have that need adjusting. Just follow the same directions.

Tutorial written by Angie Briggs