Highlight Color Effect in Lightroom – 5 Easy Steps
One effect many people like to use with their photos is to remove all the color from the image and leave it in only one place in the image. For example, in a wedding shot you might turn the entire image into black and white leaving just the bride’s bouquet in color.
Here’s how to achieve this effect in Lightroom using the Adjustment Brush.
Step 1
Start with the image selected in Lightroom and switch to the Develop module.
Click on the Adjustment Brush and make sure you have it set to Show Effect Sliders so that you can adjust multiple sliders at once. Drag the Saturation to -100.
Step 2
Click the letter O so that you can see as you paint and with a large size hard paintbrush click on the image in an area you want converted to black and white and then paint over the image in all places that it should be turned to black and white.
It will be quicker if you set the feather to a low value, the brush to a large size and disable the Auto Mask option for now.
Step 3
To work close around the edges of the area that you want to leave in color, set the brush size smaller and work slowly around the edges.
If you go too far, press the Alt key (Option on the Mac) and paint out the overlay color. The Eraser uses a different brush so make sure it too is set to have Auto Mask disabled and a low Feather value.
To zoom in click Z and to move the image, press the Spacebar as you drag on it.
Step 4
Once you have the area selected that you want to convert to black and white, disable the overlay color by pressing the O key.
This leaves the selected area in black and white and the unselected area in color.
You can now tidy up the edges if necessary by using the Adjustment Brush tool – just make sure that you click on the marker for the Adjustment before you start painting – it should show a black center – if not, you’re making a new adjustment and not editing the existing one.
Step 5
You can adjust the other sliders, if desired, to improve the black and white portion of the image. For example you can boost the Contrast and Clarity if desired. When you’re done, click the Close option at the foot of the panel to finish.
In this example I added another adjustment using the Adjustment Brush over the top of this one to reduce the exposure and brightness in the sky to add back some of the cloud detail lost in the conversion of the image to black and white.
21 Responses to “Highlight Color Effect in Lightroom – 5 Easy Steps” - Add Yours
July 11th, 2009 at 1:34 am
I’m pretty sure you can do it the other way round too, desaturate the whole image and then take a brush and put the colour back in by taking a brush and whacking the saturation up to 100, I find that this is a quicker way to do the same thing :-)
July 11th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Little hint: It would probably be easier to desaturate all the colors except red using the HSL panel and then fix the rest with the adjustment brush.
July 11th, 2009 at 2:53 am
Can you do something similar in Aperture?
July 11th, 2009 at 3:35 am
Yup… another approach similar to llya would be to
1. De-saturate the entire image
2. (Optional) tweak around LighRoom to get the desired contrast and lighting
3. Use adjustment brush on the bus to selectively increase saturation.
July 11th, 2009 at 5:27 am
Yea, this is the hard way to do this. I agree with llya completely. This is the third article from Helen that I directly disagree with how it is done. Sure, there is more than one way to skin a cat, but this is just plain backwards.
July 11th, 2009 at 6:07 am
I would agree with Ilya if there were only red in the area of concern but that’s not the case.
There is orange contributing to thered in the bus – removing all but red actually changes the color of the bus to a dark lackluster dull red. When you add the orange back it becomes more like what it should be. Worse than than that, there is yellow in some of the signage on the bus, the destination signs are green and some of the detail in the front of the bus is blue. To retain the rich colors in the bus I really think that my approach is preferable.
July 11th, 2009 at 6:54 am
In this case, i would also go with Helen. There is clearly more color to the bus than just red, and we want the whole bus to appear saturated. Desaturating all but red doesn’t allow that.
July 11th, 2009 at 8:57 am
It’s nice to know how to do this in Lightroom. Sure would beat having to go to Photohsop ever single time. Thanks for the great article!
July 11th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Yeah…
I did put something almost exactly the same up in the Tutorials section, but I guess it just got lost…
I’m sure this is a better article than mine, though. :)
http://digital-photography-school.com/forum/tutorials/61711-selective-colouring-lightroom.html
July 16th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
I THINK ITS MORE SIMPLE AND EASY TAHN PHOTO SHOP
EVEN IN SHORT TIME,,,,,
July 17th, 2009 at 1:22 am
you can do the same in GIMP?
can you give directions to do it in GIMP please?
July 17th, 2009 at 7:34 am
Regardless of the technique, it is a great idea that I have never thought of doing. Now I need to find a photo to try it on!
July 17th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I just use a desaturated layer with a mask in Pshop. I am probably overlooking the power of lightroom 2 though.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Here’s the link to the GIMP tutorial page. This is called Selective Colorization. It’s pretty easy; I did it twice today.
http://gimp.org/tutorials/
August 8th, 2009 at 10:50 am
yes actually it is nice to learn how to do this in lightroom instead of moving on into photoshop. saving time is key these days eh
September 16th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
You cannot desaturete whole image a then use brush to get bus colors back. This doens’t work in Lightroom. It’s a pity. It must be done like Helen shows in her tutorial.
October 8th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
Yes. I love the brush on LR2 although with my graphics tablet I prefer to work the opposite way – desturate the whole image and paint/brush back in colour. In portraits I would reduce clarity overall then paint back in the eyes, mouth, hair etc. which is more accurate and easier than trying to go around eyes and lips.
I demonstrated this to a whole room of photographers at a Jon Gray studio shoot and they mostly just used the basics in LR – the model was ignored while I did a quick touch-up of her face on the studio mac!
I also love the way the brush leaves non-similar areas alone while I remove creases from my white backgrounds!
October 8th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
RE the above – I know it doesn’t work in LR2 but I don’t do the desaturation thing – only the clarity – in case someone asks! Obviously I’d like to be able to do that as well!
October 11th, 2009 at 2:07 am
I noticed that you left the Auto Mask option off. I’ve found this to be quite useful for its edge detection in portraits. Then again it might have been more difficult in your case because of the detail in the original photo?
November 11th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Thanks for the tip !
I had a try and I think the result is quite nice :
Red flags in the night
But my photo was very red around the flags so it took me some time to isolate the real red areas while zooming.
– Woods
November 11th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Sorry, here is the picture :
– Woods
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