Harmonystar
New member
Selective color pictures may seem easy peasy, it was one of the first "scrappy" edits I learned. So why would I do a tutorial on it? Thought we'd start out the year by improving some of our classic techniques, or if your new why not start off doing it great!
Selective coloring is when you have a black & white picture with some color in places.
a couple examples:
Do you love it? I love it! It can really enhance an image. Or distract if done poorly.
Lets start out with our picture.
Duplicate the layer. (Ctrl J)
Make your top layer black & white or sepia. I suggest using this tutorial: Challenge 1 - So you Think you know Black & White?
I used straight red channel to give me more of a high key look.
Now you can zoom in and earase the areas you want to be colored. The color from the layer beneath will show through. Use a hard brush if your using an eraser, or you can use the pen tool to extract those parts like I showed in this tutorial: June - Cut it Out!
Looks good! Some people may call it quits here, but I have found when working with selective coloring The colors are often too bright and a bit distracting. To fix this we go to our original layer and lower the saturation.
Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation Or you can add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer between your two layers if you prefer.
For this I lowered the saturation by 50
Now that's a nice selected color picture!
Sometimes since I've done all this work anyway I like to see what it looks like when I lower the opacity of the top black & white layer just a touch to let some skin color show through.
I took the opacity down to 63% to get this soft skin tone. Also a pretty edit.
Alrighty scrappers! That's it! Show me your selective color edits.
Selective coloring is when you have a black & white picture with some color in places.
a couple examples:
Do you love it? I love it! It can really enhance an image. Or distract if done poorly.
Lets start out with our picture.
Duplicate the layer. (Ctrl J)
Make your top layer black & white or sepia. I suggest using this tutorial: Challenge 1 - So you Think you know Black & White?
I used straight red channel to give me more of a high key look.
Now you can zoom in and earase the areas you want to be colored. The color from the layer beneath will show through. Use a hard brush if your using an eraser, or you can use the pen tool to extract those parts like I showed in this tutorial: June - Cut it Out!
Looks good! Some people may call it quits here, but I have found when working with selective coloring The colors are often too bright and a bit distracting. To fix this we go to our original layer and lower the saturation.
Image - Adjustments - Hue/Saturation Or you can add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer between your two layers if you prefer.
For this I lowered the saturation by 50
Now that's a nice selected color picture!
Sometimes since I've done all this work anyway I like to see what it looks like when I lower the opacity of the top black & white layer just a touch to let some skin color show through.
I took the opacity down to 63% to get this soft skin tone. Also a pretty edit.
Alrighty scrappers! That's it! Show me your selective color edits.
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