Grayscale & Color in the same image

[ewheat]

Hi, everybody! I'm new Photoshop (and to the community) and decided to join once I browsed through some of the tutorials and read some great tips.

I'm currently using Photoshop 7 on OSX and I'm trying to keep one of the figures in the picture in color while I convert the rest of the picture to grayscale. Any advice?

[Flora]

Hi Elysia,

Welcome to RP!

One way to achieve what you asked with Photoshop is the following:

Select the object in the picture you want to keep coloured with whatever selection Tool you feel comfortable .... In my example, I used the method described in this tutorial

Ctrl+I (invert the selection) .... you might need to feather it a bit.

Ctrl+Shift+U (desaturate the 'inverted' selection)

P.S. I changed the colour of the flower because the original pale blue didn't stand out much against the grey background...

[DannyRaphael]

Hello, Elysia:

Welcome to RetouchPRO.

As you get familiar with Photoshop, you'll discover that to achieve a certain effect, sometimes there are multiple ways to "get there." Here another way that will allow you to achieve the results you want.

Assuming the picture you want to manipulate is the Background:
* Layer > Add Adjustment Layer > Hue Saturation
* Click OK in the "New Layer" dialog
* In the Hue/Saturation dialog, drag the Saturation slider to the far LEFT, which will appear to convert your image to B/W.
* Click OK to close the dialog

...side trip here...
* Click the eyeball of the Hue/Sat layer to turn it off. Notice when you do your original BG appears in living color.
* Click the eyeball again. Back to BW. So what? When you apply an adjustment layer (any kind), the underlying pixels are not physically changed, which in many cases is a good thing.
...end of side trip.

* If your Tools palette isn't visible, Window > Tools to show it
* Choose the Brush tool
* Press the D key (this will set the forground/background colors to their defaults of B/W in case they were changed)
* Click the Brushes tab to show the Brushes palette and select a soft-edge brush (which size will depend on your image, so you might have to experiment a bit)
* Opacity: About 70%; Flow: About 50%
* Airbrush setting: On
* Start "painting" on your image where you want the color to reappear. You may have to change the flow, opacity settings or even the brush size as you go.
* The big bonus. If you goof, press the X key, which will X-change the foreground/background colors. Paint with white to restore grayscale to areas where you may have overdone it. Switch back to black to reveal color.

Try this and see how it goes. The advantage of this method is flexibility. If you goof, it's easy to fix. Just paint black or white depending on the need at the moment.

Ready for a little fun? I:
* Be sure the Hue/Saturation layer is the active layer (eyeball on and the layer name is highlighted)
* Image > Adjustments > Invert. What was once color is now BW.
* Image > Adjustments > Invert. Back to where you started.

How about a little more fun? II:
* Double-click on the Hue/Sat thumbnail in the Layers Palette so the dialog opens
* Click the "colorize" checkbox.
* Fiddle with the Hue and Lightness sliders to see what you get.
* Are you having fun yet?

Hope this helps and gets your imagination going.

~Danny~

[ewheat]

Thanks for everybody's help! I played around with the hue and saturation and achieved a really nice antique tinted look.