Tutorials Index

Beagle Smudge
Color Management
Color Spots
Crop Tool
FFT Action
Gradient Artifacts
Gradient Mask
Layer Mask Basics
Out of Bounds
Smooth Skin Action
Sky Replacement
Window Arrange

COLOR SPOTS ON BLACK AND WHITE

Foreword:
Starting with a regular color photo in RGB, I will show several different approaches to create a black and white photo with some color spots. You may use this to emphasize a certain part of the image, to minimize distractions or simply just because it's fun and looks good.

[The Original]
Use any color image you like but for this example, I will start with a single layer JPG photo in RGB.

[Saturation Adjustment Layer]
This is the easiest and fastest way I could think of, which is still very flexible at the same time. Open your image and click on the adjustment layer icon on the bottom of your layers palette. Choose Hue/Saturation... to create your adjustment layer.

In the following window, move the Saturation slider for the Master channel to the far left, which is going to make your picture look like black and white. Hit OK.

Now look closer at your layers palette. You can see the new adjustment layer, which you can turn on and off by clicking on the eye icon . At the same time, a blank layer mask has been created and that is what we are going to use in the next step.

Make sure your foreground color is set to black and your background color is white. Hit D to reset the colors if necessary. Choose a brush (B) set to normal at full opacity, either soft or hard, depending on what kind of areas you would like to reveal. To paint on the layer mask, make sure the adjustment layer is active.

Now all you need to do, is paint with black to reveal the color of your original image. If you went too far, hit X on your keyboard to swap the foreground color with the background color, which should give you white. With white, you can hide the color again. Here are the areas I painted black in my example (this is the layer mask, not the original image).

Wherever there is black, the effect of the saturation layer is hidden, in other words the color beneath is revealed. The resulting image will look like this:

Be creative, so feel free to lower the opacity of the adjustment layer to reveal a little bit of color everywhere or use the opposite approach. Create the saturation adjustment layer as described above but then fill the layer mask with black. After that, use a white brush to paint in black and white.

Save your file as PSD, so you can keep the layer and adjust it anytime you like. Flatten the image and save as JPG when you want to send it to your friends. For a better black and white image, use the Channel Mixer instead of Hue & Saturation.

[Layer Mask]
This is my preferred way of doing it. First of all, duplicate your image (Image/Duplicate). Convert the copy to black and white, using whatever method you like best. In my case, I used the Greg Gorman method and choose a slightly red tone for my black and white.

After finishing your black and white, convert it back to RGB (Image/Mode/RGB Color). Select the Move Tool (V), hold down your Shift key and drag the image over to your color photo.

Add a layer mask and use a black brush to reveal the color. In my case, I made a selection using the channels and the brush to finish up. The same goes for the layer mask as mentioned earlier for the adjustment layer. Make sure you are working on the layer mask and not the layer itself. Use black to hide and white to reveal the layer effect.

Here is what it looks like after using this method.

[History Brush] This is my least favorite method, because it will destroy your original and after saving, you can't go back. Nevertheless, for a quick version to do some brainstorming or just doodle around with some ideas, this is an easy and convenient way.

Open your image and convert it to Grayscale (Image/Mode/Grayscale), then convert it back to RGB (Image/Mode/Grayscale). Before we start painting, create a snapshot of the present history state. Click on the camera icon at the bottom of the history palette to do so.

You are now ready to select your history brush (Y) and paint back some of that color. As you can see from the history palette, the history state of the original image is selected. This means that when you paint with the history brush, it will reveal the image as it looked like at that time.

If you painted too much and would like to have some of that black and white again, simply click on the left side of the Snapshot 1 and paint over the area again. This way, you can swap back and forth between the color and the grayscale image to choose the source for your history brush.

So... where is the fun you ask? Well...try running some filters on your image, create a snapshot after each filter and then use the history brush again, this time with plenty of sources to choose from. If that is not enough, there is another brush hidden beneath the history brush, which is called Art History Brush. Try that and you will see what I mean.

If you use the standard steps with the history brush as described above, you can get the same results as seen with the other methods, so I won't show you how that looks like. On the other hand, if you use your imagination, I'm sure the history brush will be fun to use and a good starting point to collect some ideas.

Posted: October 24, 2005 (tested with PS CS2)