Black and White Images with Partial Color
One of the ways to emphasize a part of an image is to make it black and white and leave that particular detail intact, i.e colored. Like with all other Photoshop operations, this can be done in a variety of ways. Although it may look and sound difficult, it’s actually pretty easy. You’ll just need a lot of patience and precision if you want to single out the details accurately.
The first photo for this tutorial was downloaded from www.sxc.hu:
Load the desired picture into Photoshop. And decide on the detail that you would like to emphasize. I’ll try to single out the flower that this girl is holding. First of all, you’ll need to desaturate the image. The best way to do this without damaging your image is by means of adjustment layers. So, apply the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, check the Colorize box and move the saturation slider all the way to the left.
Having done this, add a new layer by going to Layer > New > Layer and rename it according to the detail you’re emphasizing. I named this layer Rose. Then select the history brush tool. Make sure that your foreground color is set to black, and the background color is set to white. If different colors were picked, press D on your keyboard to select the default colors.
When all this is taken care of, you’re set to start “painting” over the rose with your History Brush. You’ll see the color return to the areas you’re painting over. Feel free to zoom in on your picture and paint over the detail carefully and patiently. Paint around the edges of the object first, since it requires a lot of patience and precision.
When you finish making “borders” around the object, increase the brush diameter by pressing the “]” key. Then, paint over the rest of the object.
The final result looks like this:
A useful Tip:
Now that you have the whole rose in a separate layer, you can adjust it even further. If you want to make the red color even more emphasized, with the Rose layer selected, go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and play with the saturation slider until you’re completely satisfied.
A tutorial by Bonifacio Cruz
