Reproduce the ‘colorizer’ effect of Spotify

Written in 2015, March —

Spotify has recently presented a bold new explosive and colorful brand identity as a result of a year of work with the New York firm Collins. The goal was to create a rich and alive spirit highlighting Spotify’s the huge music database.

Collins’s team decided to play with bright colors and to create series of abstract forms, probably for evoking the various sensations we have when we’re listening music. It’s simple, fresh and sparkling. I truly fell in love with this brand new identity and that’s why I decided to share a simple trick with you to reproduce spotify’s picture effect with Adobe Photoshop.

Let’s play with colors

The key making this effect is to play with whites and blacks of our image. Let’s try by taking a cool picture (prefer a picture with a lighted and united background).

1. Black and white

Source : billboard.com

Open your image in Photoshop and, if this isn’t already the case, convert it in black and white (Choose Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Black & White).

2. Contrast

Now, create a contrast/brightness layer setting (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Brightness/Contrast. Click ok in the new layer dialog box) with value 90 for contrast. Adjust the value to flatten the whites and strengthen the blacks of your picture (you can duplicate the setting layer as much as necessary).

3. Play with whites

We are now going to apply a very bright color (here #00ff36) on the whites shades by creating a solid color. Apply the blending mode “multiply” on the layer.

You should have a result like this.

4. Play with blacks

Then, we will play with the blacks shades. Create a new solid with rather dark color (here #23278a) and apply the blending mode “lighten” this time.

5. Add some cool shapes

You can play with shapes and with the different plans (foreground / background) to add dynamism and depth to your image.

You can also adjust the contrast and the brightness to have a best final result by adding a new layer setting.

You can test this trick with other cool colors by taking them from the Collins work which you can find here. Cool, you are now a ‘colorizer’ expert.