Heather Ann Designs Gallery - Photography Challenge - Selective Coloring of an object

Photography Challenge – Selective coloring of an object

For this challenge, we are going to selectively color an object in a photo. There are several ways to do this, but I’ve found that this method is the easiest, so easy is a good thing!

1. In Photoshop, PSE or other compatible program, open your photo.

2. Create a duplicate layer (layer – duplicate layer)

3. Working with the top layer, turn it black & white by holding down the shift-ctrl-U keys at the same time. You’ll notice this color is very dull and blaa. To beef it up a little, hit ctrl-M to get into your curves. Pull “up” on the line with your mouse about ¾ of the way up the line towards the right side. This should lighten your photo. Pull “down” about ¼ of the way up the line – the left hand side – this should darken the photo. It’s hard to explain I guess, but play with it until you like the effect. You can also go into Image-Adjustments – and play with the levels, brightness, contrast, etc.

4. Once you get the B&W to look a little better, pick your eraser tool on your toolbar. Then select a brush that has a little bit of a soft edge. Some people prefer a hard edge – if that’s you, then pick that brush. Personally, I prefer the soft-edged brush. Adjust the size to your liking and start erasing the black & white layer where you’d like the color to show through. Don’t worry if you make a mistake – you can always ctrl-alt-Z to erase. Keep going – changing the size of your brush as necessary – until you’ve erased the desired area and created the look you’d like.

5. The next thing you want to do is de-saturate your color layer slightly so the colors don’t look so fake against the black & white. So, select the color layer on your layers palette, then go Image-adjustments-Hue/Saturation and pull the saturation down (slide to the left) about -20 or so…or until you think it looks good.

6. Once you’re done, go ahead and save it as a .jpeg and that’s it!

On this photo, I used Heather’s Happy Hearts border – I just erased the original text and put my own in there. The font is AL script hand.