I'm trying to find a way to recolor elements in PS...since my PSP has been messing up.
I've been adding a color overlay to the image...then because I want a specific color, am checking the brightness for the element compared to the brightness of the color I want & changing the brightness using the difference between the two.
In PSP, I use the manual color correction tool where basically you select the source color (original color of the element) and then set the target color (desired color you wish to change that color to). Is there anything like that in PS or should I just keep doing it how I'm doing it?
You're doing a solid color overlay, right? If so, you should be able to put it in "Color" mode at the top of the layers palette and get it just about right. Sometimes you might need to use "Hue", "Overlay", "Multiply", "Screen", or "Soft Light" and then adjust the opacity of the overlay to get it just right.
Alternatively, you can change colors on a colored object using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, which uses a slider on the spectrum bar to adjust the hue, and then has sliders for saturation and lightness. If it's a grayscale object, you can still use that, but you need to click the "Colorize" checkbox.
It really depends on the element you're trying to recolor, though--some will work far better with one technique than another.
The following video shows how to replace color:
http://jisdesigns.com/tutorial2-54replacecolor.htm
The following is a list of tutorials and videos using Photoshop:
https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/forums/software-specific/photoshop/list-photoshop-tutorials-external-links