Why can't I change the color of an object?

Ben, your link: http://http//thedigitalstory.com/2012/12/easily-color-changin.html does not work.

What s it supposed to describe?

Here's the link: http://thedigitalstory.com/2012/12/easily-color-changin.html

Thanks, Owen!

but I can only achieve a subtle shift in the change of very pale colors.

Have you tried to move the "Range" slider all the way? By clicking on the arrow tips you can step the value far beyond the range of the slider.

You are welcome, Ben 🙂

I learned the stepping of the slider values from Kirby Krieger; I had not seen it in the manual either.

Thanks, Léonie. A quick way to move any slider to its extreme is to click on the value in the Value Slider and drag all the way left or right. This is much faster than side-stepping all the way to the far limits.

I think the example the OP (Ben) is trying to emulate is misleading (given the sophistication of the Digital Story poster, deliberately, and wrongly, so). The car in the original photo is just about the only blue object (and thus pixels) in the image used to demonstrate that one can change the hue of objects using Aperture. Aperture excels at global adjustments and adjustments made to _imprecisely_ bounded areas. (This is, contrary to one's expectation, one of Aperture's great strengths: imprecisely-bounded tone and hue shifts are perceived as "natural"; precisely bounded ones look "artificial". Most photographers (as opposed to graphic artists) wish to retain the illusion of a natural world inside their pictures.) The only reason the hue-changing trick works with the car in the photo is that the Color adjustment effects only the car because it is the only blue object in the photo (there is a bluish TV in the background, and a bluish logo on one of the displays in the background).

The point is that while object-specific hue-shifts can be made with Aperture, it is not the program of choice for this kind of editing. A graphics package, which allows for much more control over selecting pixels, is recommended.

GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/downloads/) can do similar things to Photoshop, and it is free, but it has the same Mt. Everest-like learning curve as Photoshop. But if you want to do graphics compositing frequently, it would be worth to invest into learning to master such a professional tool.

On that note, does anyone here have experience with Pixelmator? Does it work in Aperture as Photoshop and Photoshop Elements do? I'm one who doesn't like Adobe's 'pay monthly' plan and am beginning to look for acceptable alternatives.

Jerry

I don't know a graphics program that doesn't work with Aperture as Aperture's "External Editor". So, yes, Pixelmator will work. And it's well worth looking into.