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Selective Colouring

In this tutorial I will show you how to achieve selective colouring, i.e. using an accent colour in an otherwise grayscale image, in a normal coloured photograph.
There are actually several ways to achieve this, but I will show you the technique I use.


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Image of water lilly was found at sxc.hu and resized to fit this tutorial.

TOOLS:

  • Adobe Photoshop CS
Selective Colouring
Pick out the image you want to work with and open it in Photoshop
Press D on your keyboard or click the little icon next to your colour swatches to set your colours back to black for the foreground and white for the background.
In your layers palette, click the adjustment layer icon and click Gradient Map; or navigate to it through Layer –> New Adjustment Layer –> Gradient Map


You should get a pop-up where you can choose your gradient. Double check the default black to white gradient is shown. If you reset your colours like I said in the previous step, this should be the case.
Click OK.


Your image should now have been converted to a black and white image.
In the layers palette you should have a second layer on top of your picture layer, which is your gradient map.

Your “gradient map” layer should by default have a Layer Mask.
If this is not the case, then click on the gradient map layer to activate it and then click on the Layer Mask icon in your layers palette or go to Layer –> Ad Layer Mask –> Reveal All to create a layer mask.

Click this layer mask to activate it.

Select the Brush Tool and pick a round brush and change the hardness to a value between 50-60%.


It doesn’t really matter if you start with a default hard or a default soft brush. The only difference between these two is that the one has a hardness of 100% (clear defined edges) and the other a hardness of 0% (fuzzy edges).



I also changed the flow of my brush to a lower value (56%) to have more room to play.

With a foreground colour of black start brushing the element in your picture of which you want the colour to show. In my case that is the water lilly.
By painting on top of the layer mask with black, you are cancelling its effect in those areas. If you made a mistake, change your foreground colour to white and brush out the mistake, i.e. reactivate the mask in that area.


In the end, on your layer mask you can see the outline of your element in black. You can check what your layer mask looks like by pressing alt and clicking the layer mask. You can also paint on your mask in this mode to fill in spaces you forgot. Press alt & click the mask again to exit this view.
On you picture, your element should now be in colour, while the rest of your picture is still in black and white.

At this stage you could say our project is finished, but lets go a step further. Lets make the colours really pop by using a different adjustment layer: Hue/Saturation.


In your layers palette, click the adjustment layer icon again, but this time choose Hue/Saturation. You can also get this by navigating to Layer -–> New Adjustment Layer –> Hue/Saturation


A box will appear with three different sliders:

  • Hue is most of the time a synonym for colour. When you say blue, you refer to all colours or hues of blue: light blue, sky blue, navy blue,…
  • Saturation is the intensity of the colour.
  • Lightness

Play around with these sliders to make your object have a more intenser colour or to change the hue. Be careful though, too much saturation isn’t pretty either!

And here’s a little extra. A technique I love, because it ads a soft, dreamy feel to a picture.


Create a new layer all the way to the top of your layers palette.
Hit Ctrl-A to select your image and then hit Shift-Ctrl-Alt-E to merge all visible layers onto the new layer. Basically, you have now made a copy of your picture in one layer.


Go to Filter –> Blur –> Gaussian Blur and pick a ratio of 5px. Hit OK.


Set this layer to Soft Light or Overlay and change its opacity until you have something you like.


And that’s it!
Hope you found this useful :)



5 comments to “ Selective Colouring ”

  1. May 8, 2009 at 9:10 am

    Jess says:

    Wow. This tutorial was easy to understand (and I am very Photoshop illiterate). Thanks. :)

    Leave a reply

    May 8, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    gawariel says:

    You’re welcome ^_^ . Glad it was comprehensive :)

    Leave a reply



  2. May 8, 2009 at 1:54 pm

    Brytning says:

    Thanks for the tips! These effects are always so cool, neat to know how to do them!

    Leave a reply

    May 8, 2009 at 11:09 pm

    gawariel says:

    Glad you liked it :)

    Leave a reply



  3. November 16, 2009 at 8:56 pm

    sir says:

    i cnt find the layer mask part? confused.
    im using photoshop element 6.0.

    Leave a reply


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