Mono, with a Touch of Colour - New Tutorial

[gajettes]

Here are my first attempts at this project - what fun! I use have used Photoshop for a long time but have learned more in the few days since joining digital photography school than I have in the last several years - thanks! I am a graphic designer by trade but Photoshop has never been a huge part of my work - thanks for opening up this new and fun world to me! It's great to have projects that are well explained and useful (and fun).

For both of the pics I added an adjustment layer channel to change the photo to b&w - I like the control (per one of the other suggestions that linked to another tutorial on this site! - which is also great btw). For the second photo I just applied added a layer mask to the background so only the subject is b&w...oh the possiblities...

Thanks again for a great tutorial!

[ployoung]

I love to play around with my photo. Monotone is something I do a lot. It's the other way to make your pictures look more interesting. The colour will catch your eyes from other b&w part. It's kind of psychological.

I usually duplicate the picture into the new layer. It's easy to me.

[beckywithasmile]

Originally Posted by googlit

similarly, if you want to add color that wasn't there before, create a new layer above your pic (which can be in either color or b&w) and change its blending mode to color. Then pick a paintbrush and a color, and start painting. The paintbrush's blending mode should be normal.

so you can do something along these lines... it's a flickrfly.

Neat technique. I like the idea. I'll have to find something to try it on.

[RandomConnections]

I thought both the tutorial and the comments provided some great insight on the technique. I had used the desaturation technique described in the tutorial for this shot...



I actually desaturated the orange in the pumpkin a bit because it seemed a a little too stark.

I did this second shot after reading the tutorial, using the channel mixer layer technique. My nieces were both wearing red shoots, and I wanted to highlight that common point...

[waassaabee]

[henryscat]

Glad that it has been of some use to people!
Results are looking good too!

[PnwGuy]

Nicole, great tip on using PSE for this effect. I sat down thinking it would take me 15-20 minutes to work through it but it took just a couple. It was so very simple. Thanks!!

[chorltonmeateater]

Sorry for posting this image twice, but I had already posted it the "Blue" thread before seeing this thread for which it was far more appropriate. I cheated and just used Picasa to do the effect as the object was round, meaning I could just desaturate around a central point.

[jinxworld]

probably posted this photo in color somewhere before....

[Faded_Mantis]

I use Photoshop 6 and GIMP 2.2, and I thought "There has to be a way to do this in the GIMP...and there is.

1) Open the image in GIMP

2) Duplicate the origional layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer ... or right click layer in layers palatte > duplicate layer)

3) Desaturate the Copy (Layer > Colours > Desaturate)

4) Click the clone stamp and set it to "Image source" and "Registered"

5) Click on the background layer in the layers pallate (use the eye to hide the desaturated copy if you want) and alt+click on part of the image that you want to bring the colour back in.

6) Click on the desaturated copy layer in the layers pallate (click the eye to bring if back if you hid it before) and paint the area that you want the colour to come back in.

7) Sit back and Enjoy

Note: When doing this the locating that the clone stamp takes the clone from is exactally under your brush