Black and White

[brooke17]

HEy guys, im a newbie! I was wondering how you have ablack and white photo but you can make certain parts of it colour, for example a field in balck and white but have a sunflower in yellow...

[Rich F]

Here's the easy way. (Probably not going to give the best results)

What you want to do is take the photo in color. Next make a duplicate layer in whatever program you use to edit your photos. Desaturate this layer to get the b&w.
Next, use the eraser tool and erase the sunflower from the b&w layer so the flower on the color layer shows.

I tried it with a picture of my son a while back. The original picture was taken in color.

[Raoul Isidro]

Here you go...

[OsmosisStudios]

You can do wonders going from a colour photo to black and white: going back the other way is tough.

[dcclark]

I'm pretty sure the OP was referring to selective color, as the first few replies covered. But yes, coloring a B&W photo is tricky...

I'll mention that the "selective color" technique is SEVERELY overused. It can look neat, but it's become a bit of a cliche. One useful variation, however, is to slightly decrease the saturation of your background, and slightly increase the saturation of your subject. That can make the subject "pop" withouth being overly obvious and "processed"-looking.