Today’s Question: How do I change the overlay color for the Remove tool in Photoshop to something other than the default color (pink)? Can it be done?
Tim’s Quick Answer: You can change the overlay color for the Remove tool in Photoshop by clicking the gear icon on the Options bar and choosing a different color from the Color popup. You can also adjust the opacity for the color overlay with the associated Opacity control.
More Detail: The Remove tool is relatively new to Photoshop and it provides image cleanup based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology. When you paint on the image with the Remove tool (which I recommend doing through the use of a separate image layer created for image cleanup work) a color overlay shows the area of your brush stroke. This makes it easy to be sure you’re painting completely over the object you want to remove from the photo.
The default color for this overlay is magenta, which I consider to be a good default because magenta tends not to be a color that is very common in a lot of images. But obviously there are also many photos where a magenta overlay wouldn’t be the best choice, such as when you are attempting to remove an object that has a color relatively close to magenta.
Fortunately, you can change both the color and the opacity of this overlay. Start by selecting the Remove tool from the toolbar (it is on the same button as the Spot Healing Brush tool, so you can right-click on that button to bring up a popup that includes the Remove tool). Then on the Options bar click the gear icon. That will bring up a popup panel where you’ll find a popup for Color and a popup slider for Opacity. You can select any color you’d like from the popup, and then adjust the opacity to your liking.
The updated settings will remain in place unless you change them, or if you reset the tool, or if you reset preferences for Photoshop.
