How to Change the Color of an Object in a Video (Free)

You filmed the perfect clip — but the jacket is the wrong colour, the product shot needs the new brand shade, or you just want to see that car in blue. Professional editors do this with the Change to Color effect in After Effects or a colour key in Premiere. You can do the same thing in your browser, free, in a couple of minutes.

How video recolouring works

Every pixel has a hue (which colour it is), a saturation (how strong) and a lightness (how bright). A good recolour changes only the hue of the pixels that match your chosen colour and leaves their lightness alone. That's why folds in fabric, reflections on paint and shadows on a face still look natural afterwards — the light and shade are untouched, only the colour shifts.

Step by step

1. 1

   Add your clip

   Drop in an MP4, MOV (iPhone) or WebM file. The first time, a video engine of about 30 MB downloads once; after that everything runs locally.

2. 2

   Pick the colour to change

   Choose the colour of the object you want to recolour — the shirt, the car, the logo.

3. 3

   Pick the new colour

   Choose the target colour. The shading and brightness of the original carry over automatically.

4. 4

   Set the match

   A tight match changes only colours very close to your pick; a looser one also catches the darker and lighter shades of the same object. Preview and adjust until only the right areas change.

5. 5

   Recolour and download

   Process the clip and download the result.

Tips for a clean result

• Pick an object that stands out. The tool changes that colour everywhere in the frame. A red car on a grey street is easy; a red shirt in front of a red wall will change both.
• Mid-tones work best. Reds, blues, greens and pastels recolour beautifully. Pure black, white and grey have almost no hue to shift, so they barely change.
• Even lighting helps. Strong coloured light (a sunset, neon signs) tints everything in the shot and makes the match less precise.
• Keep clips short. Every frame is processed on your own device, so a 10–30 second clip is quick; long videos take longer, especially on a phone.
• Try it on a still first. To find the right colours fast, grab a frame and test it with the image recolour tool, then apply the same choice to the video.

Browser tool vs. After Effects

If the object you want to change shares its colour with something else in the shot, a professional editor's masking and tracking is still the right tool. For the everyday case — one distinct colour, one quick change — a browser recolour gets you there in minutes.