Here is the first installment of the tutorial. There are several different ways to do selective coloring, I just did the easiest I know of for simple selective coloring. I will send you another way by sitemail, but I wanted to post this picture so you had something simple to start out with. Let me know if you have any problems with this method. Kim

Okay, I am going to try to write this down as I do it. That way I know I will not be missing any steps.
I picked out a photo that I thought was very easy, if you like you can try it on this photo, it just won't have as big a file. Then you can try it on something else.
There are a couple different ways to come out with the same effect.
Here is the easiest way I know how:

Step 1: After opening a photo I always adjust any brightness or contrast first. Upping the contrast always makes your grayscales more dramatic. This is also the time to do any color adjustments, say, if you wanted to make the door a different shade of red.

Step 2: Mask off the door. You can do this with any of the masking tools, whichever is easiest for the job. On very detailed photos I will zoom in on specific areas to make sure I've gotten all the edges and little nooks and crannies! On the door you can use a regular rectangle mask, just be sure to place the mask lines just a hair to the outside of the lines, this will make sure  a section that should be color doesn't end up with a B&W edge.

Step 3: Once your color subject is masked, go to "select" and pick "inverse". This will set you up to remove the color from everything else.

Step 4: Go to "Enhance" , "adjust color", "remove color". WA LA!!!

There you have a selective color photo. At this point you can save a copy of it, but don't save the changes to the original photo, so you can use it again if you want. Then if you open up the copy, you can play around with it some more and add finishing touches.

Kim Hawkins

 

Kim Hawkins Eastern Sierra Gallery