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I have a pretty basic digital drawing, using a wood texture. The problem I have is the texture has highlights on one side that don't match the rest of the wood. I have tried just putting a brown color over them with 20% opacity, messing around with HSL, but I don't know anything about levels or stuff.

Here is the image, I want to make the wood's highlighting and color more uniform.

enter image description here

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  • Welcome to GD. I do not entirely understand your question.. maybe some more images would help. However: a thought would also be that your current highlight is now under the handle of the sword, while as if it was to match the lighting on the blade, you would have to make it parallel and go alongside the handle on the upper side. – benteh Jun 22 '14 at 23:34
  • @RandomO'Reilly Yes that would be the most accurate depiction, but since I am using a texture (drawing this is way above my skill level) I have to live with what I have. The best I can do is remove the highlight right under the blade, which is what I am trying to do. – WD40 Jun 23 '14 at 2:43
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Here's another approach for Photoshop that you could take to achieve the result you want.

Firstly to tone down the highlight is;

  • Using your colour picker (i) select one of the darker tones from the handle.

  • Make a new layer and fill it with the darker colour using the paint bucket tool (G).

  • Create a layer mask to ensure that the fill you've created is only covering the are of the handle that has the highlight. (Mask shown in 1)

  • At the top of the layers panel, you can change the blend mode of this layer to darken (as shown in 2)

enter image description here

You can also use this approach to make the new highlight.

  • Using your colour picker (i) select one of the light tones from the handle.

  • Make a new layer and fill it with the lighter colour using the paint bucket tool (G).

  • Create a layer mask to ensure that the fill you've created is only covering the are of the handle that you wish to highlight.

  • At the top of the layers panel, you can change the blend mode of this layer to Linear Dodge (add)

Here is my the final result (of course though it's a quick example and you may spend more time tweaking your own version);

enter image description here

Hope I've helped!

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  • Thank you so much! This has really helped me! I should have messed around with blend modes... – WD40 Jun 23 '14 at 23:53
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Try this. In photoshop on the left should be where your toolbar resides. About halfway down, should be a icon that looks like a lollipop.

Click and hold that and 3 options should come out: Dodge, burn and sponge.

Click on the burn tool and at the top, reduce the exposure to a low level around 10 - 15% and switch the range to 'Shadows' and brush where the highlight is. Make sure that you have a soft brush for this technique. It should automatically give you one but if it doesn't, hold Shift + [ together to reduce the hardness.

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  • +1 for using dodge and burn. While they require more artistic skill than blend modes, they offer more precise control. – Jackson Hyde Jun 23 '14 at 16:53

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