How to Make a Quick Monotone
In Photoshop, here’s a quick way to colorize a grayscale image to match a specific color in a layout:
First change its color mode to RGB (Image> Mode> RGB). Then choose your desired color as your Foreground color. (Here’s a super Photoshop tip that many people don’t know: to select a color from anywhere on your display — including documents in other applications such as QuarkXPress — just click and drag the Color Picker across your image and let go on any pixel on your display.)
Then add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer by clicking the Create New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette.
In the Adjustments panel (or dialog box in earlier versions of Photoshop), click the Colorize checkbox, which will move the Hue slider to your Foreground color.
Now simply adjust the Lightness and Saturation sliders to your liking and you’re done!
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.