Changing Colors/Shades ???

Probably much more explanation than you need, but I'm the type that likes lots of detail to clarify questions (not to mention the fact that I'm so new at this, I'm still not sure which pieces of information might or might not be relevant).

Since I'm just starting on making prim clothes, I'm trying to start fairly simple and work my way up. My question has to do with the Picture of the object to put on the wall for selling.

I've created a prim skirt that is composed of pieces that look like flimsy gauze. Each piece is exactly the same - I just position multiple pieces to get the result. For the individual pieces, I selected a Library texture called 'White Transparent', set a Transparency value, and did not pick a 'color' at all. After putting the pieces together to make the skirt, I then selected a color. I've taken a picture of myself wearing the skirt and have got it properly edited to be my display picture in the store.

Now for the Picture problem/question: I can easily make this same skirt in multiple colors by only having to change that one characteristic - color. Seems to work well for an initial start, since I'm not trying to learn complicated patterns yet. Since it is so easy to change the color of the skirt itself, I would like to be able to change the color in the picture just as easily -- without having to actually take a picture of each skirt and go thru the cropping/lighting/editing stuff for each one.

Since the picture has multiple shades of the same color -- because of the overlapping -- is there a way to change the primary color in the picture and have it change the related shades as well?

Since I'm trying out different packages, I've downloaded the following trial products to play with and therefore will be ultimately using one of them - and I also have Gimp:
Adobe Photoshop CS3, Corel Paintshop Pro Photo XI, Corel Painter X

Thanks for whatever help you can give!!!

There are a number of ways you can get the effect you're looking for in Photoshop, and presumably in the other two programs as well, but I wouldn't recommend it. Here's why:

First, if you replace the color in a paint program, rather than taking a real photo, there's not much guarantee that it's going to match the way the item actually looks in SL. Maybe it will; maybe it won't. If it's anything less than a dead ringer for the original, you're probably going to have some angry customers on your hands. It's not a good idea to develop a reputation as one who doctors product photos.

Second, even if you use the quickest and easiest methods at your disposal to recolor the imagery, the amount of work it would take would be significantly more than just changing your outfit in SL and hitting the snapshot button. So even if you were good enough at image editing to make your fake colored picture look exactly like the real thing, what would be the point? All you'd be doing would be wasting a whole bunch of time to get a less reliable result.

It's much simpler and more reliable just to take a new photo.

I'm new enough at the photo editing stuff that it took me quite a while to get the snapshot the way I wanted it to look, so I figured that just changing the colors would be the easiest way to get changed photos. Didn't realize that just changing the item's color in the picture might distort the effect enough to make it not really look like the product. I guess I'll probably get faster at the editing of those snapshots as I do more of them.

Thanks for the info.

or put prim boxes colored to the new colors under the picture, and put the tinted pieces in that box and set it for sale as the colored option, maybe with a floating text over it or something stating it is such and such color option

Chosen's absolutely right. Take pics of all the colors. I'm not sure what you did with your vendor pics that took so much post processing, but if you retouched/altered the item that you are selling at all (in this case the clothing), its really false representation.

Go the high road and get the best pics you can and drop the models with the different colors in your background. The last thing you want is for customers to come and say the coloring or anything else was not representative of what they bought. It happens all too often in SL, just ask the average customer how many items they purchased that didn't look like the ads.

Rhaorth's idea is nice, but people do prefer seeing the actual outfit in the color before they purchase it.

depends on the item, at least for me
if I see clothes that are well basic clothing, and they have say, red blue green and pink options, and they have the blue one pictured
my imagination is good enough to think what the pink will look like

however if the item has multiple colors then yes by all means take additional pics, best way to do it

I was going to say the exact same thing....... i've got some stuff going in exchange for a charity donation and that's what i did. Single large-ish pic of outfit plus smaller samples of alternative colours underneath. Hover text over main pic to say somethin like ... donate here or choose alternative colour below... Seems to work well enough coz people have picked the other colours too.

Editing the picture didn't involve changing anything with the clothing/model iteself. More a matter of trying to get the person oriented correctly on the sign so that I could add writing, getting the background color right (the pictures I took, looked like the background was more gray rather than white), working with making the image larger/smaller to see what looked best -- that kind of stuff. I just figured that if it took that long to get a decent photo and get it put into a decent sign, that it would be far easier to just drop a new color on the skirt and save that as the new picture. It would have been the exact same color (from the color palette) that I had put on the new skirt -- the only issue had been the areas that were 1,2,3 shades darker because of material overlap.

Thanks for all the input - always a learning experience.

... also.... kinda wondering.... would separate pictures take longer to load than one big one plus smaller colour swatches? Dunno, but i do know i tend to leave shops if the images take forever to show?

I have shirts that i sell like the way you would buy them in a store (except none of the plastic wrap ^^). I took photos of the fronts of the shirts and then cropped them simply into a square where the neck shows and it kinda looks like the shirt is folded up when i stick it on a flat prim then i made it look like I threw em on a table top only well its more orderly so people can click buy on the appropriate coloured shirt. So if your a have issues with photo editing why not just crop a square piece of the skirt for a colour swatch and stick it on a prim like a box or something. There are a few ways to do it without having a full picture of each skirt.

well being for me the color swatches would generally be tinted prims, no texture to download, then yes I think the pictures would be quicker to load as there would be less of them

I too will leave a shop if it is slow