How do I....?

[Janeice]

This is to all of the photographers here:

I was looking at all of the beautiful pics of our other children and I seen some photos that are done in a mix of black and white and color. How do you do that. I have a couple of photos of my baby that I would like to do in B/W and have his hat and blanket in color. Any easy suggestions would be great, the only program I have is Photoshop, which I cannot figure out how to do anything with. Please help!!
Thanks!!
Janeice

[Kirk Kief]

Tell you what would be easiest. Email me the highest resolution copy of that image that you have, and I'll do it for you. It is actually easy to do, but, it will be easier for me to do this for you. And, I'd be pickled tink to do this for you. Send it to me by going to www.yousendit.com and use my email address, kirk@kiefphoto.com

[Janeice]

Kirk,
I'll do my best!! I have other photos on my computer that I would like to learn how to do that with too. I figured it was complicated. Thank You,
Janeice

[Kirk Kief]

Is this what you have in mind? I feel it best with just the hat left in color. I have cut down on the saturation of the hat, as that helps to lend to the feel of the image better. Too high of a contrast between the color and the B&W will draw all the attention to the hat, instead of the Angel.

[Bill Tilton]

Hi Janeice,

As with most things in Photoshop, there are a dozen different ways to do anything! I'm going to suggest the most basic way I can think of, even if it's not the best. You can fine tune later!

You must understand the concept of layers. Each image starts out as a single layer, called the background layer. There are various ways of making additional layers, but for this job, we want to duplicate this background layer. Right-click on the background layer and choose "duplicate".

If you've done that correctly, you now have two identical layers with the same picture. But we can change that. By making the two layers different, we can combine some properties of each. The differences could be anything you like — color vs B&W, sharp vs diffused, or saturated vs muted.

Let's say your top layer will be B&W and the lower will be in color. It helps if you think of this as a B&W print laid on top of a color print. Imagine that you could punch a hole in the top print so the color showed through. That same concept applies in Photoshop except that we use a selection tool and delete the selection from the top layer.

You will need to experiment with the various selection tools (rectangular, oval, freehand and magic wand.) But for a test, pick any one of them to make ANY kind of selection and then delete the selected area. By the way, if you are doing any significant amount of this, you will want to purchase a graphics pen/tablet. Doing selections with a mouse gets real painful after awhile.

You can make a B&W image from color in a number of ways. A quick and dirty way is to choose hue/saturation and lightness and then totally desaturate the image (on one layer). There are much better ways, however.

Also, layer masking allows you to make the top layer transparent by degrees. If you have half B&W and half color, you get sort of a tinted effect. But layer masking is a whole topic on its own!

If you Google the words "Photoshop" and "tutorial" you will find a number of very specific instructions, perhaps two or three pages with pictures, that show you how to do various Photoshop tasks.

Good Luck! Give me a call if you get stuck.

Bill

[Janeice]

Bill and Kirk,
Thanks for your help on that. Unfortunatly that particular picture is not one of his best, that one was taken the day after he was born. It was just too bad that I didnt get any of the ones I like from a digital source besides my phone camera. But, hey, thanks for working on it Kirk. I will play around with photoshop a little this weekend being I have it off from school and do the googling you suggested. I have tried the magic wand and stuff, but it never connects to what I want and I when I try to get it to stop, it keeps going, maybe becauase I didnt reconnect from the start point I don't know. Bill, I know you still have pics too. Take your time as I've said, no rush. Thanks for the help!
Janeice

[Kirk Kief]

If you take what Bill instructed, but don't do a selection.
I'm going to take you down the Masking route. Once you have the two layers, one in color and one in B&w (B&W on top), then look at the bottom of your layers pallette. You'll see a little icon that looks like a square with a hole in the middle. Click on that, this is the quickmask. Now, select your brush tool, put your foreground color on black, and the background color on white. Now, start painting black over the portion of your photo that you want the color to show through. If you expose too much, then simply switch your color to white (hit the X key on your keyboard to switch from foreground to background) and paint over the mistake. The HUGE advantage with using the masking method, is that you can easily, and repeatedly, correct any little mistakes.
Working with masks, in the beginning, can be a little confusing, because of the fact that painting with black reveals the layer directly underneath and white hides it. But, once it sinks in to you, you'll LOVE it.
Also, adjust the brush size and softness as you paint. To make it larger/smaller use the bracket keys. The [ key makes the brush smaller, and the ] key makes it larger. For soft or hard edges, hold down the shift key and use the same bracket keys. The [ key makes the edges softer, the ] key makes it harder.