BW photos mixed with color

JG
Posted By
Jeff_Giberson
Feb 16, 2004
Views
651
Replies
13
Status
Closed
I have a photo of a girl holding a red rose. I’m trying to make it black and white except for the rose. I copied the image and converted one to grayscale. When I try to cut the rose back in from the RGB image, it gets converted to grayscale. Any other way to do this? Any help would be much appreciated!! Pretty much a novice!! Thanks!!!!!
Related Tags
black and white color

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MM
Mac_McDougald
Feb 16, 2004
Several ways to do it.
Perhaps easiest to try first:
– leave in RGB
– select the part you want to leave in color; feather a pixel or 3. – select/inverse
– desaturate

Mac
MR
Mark_Reibman
Feb 16, 2004
I really enjoy doing this technique.

<http://www.pbase.com/image/16414681>

Another approach. From your layers palette, at the bottom, select hue saturation. Slide the saturation to the left -100

Hit the D key (to get to black white default on the toolbar) With black as foreground.

Select the brush tool.

Zoom in as much as you can.

Painting with the brush tool on the rose will bring back the color. Hit the X key if you want to correct your painting.

You can also put a black and white conversion above the color layer and use the eraser tool at 100% opacity to bring the color out.

As Mac said, there are many approaches to this and it is useful to no more than one way to do it.
SR
Schraven_Robert
Feb 16, 2004
Or,

Copy your image into a second layer. Activate the top one, then remove all colour from the top one as per above. Next use the erasure to go over the rose and rub out the bl&W as precise as you can. The rose should come out in colour where as the rest stays bl&W.

In fact all as per Mark’s last sentence which I overlooked when reading the previous mail. Sorry for doubling up replies. 🙂

Robert
J
john
Feb 16, 2004
Of course, the same technique, once learned, can be used for many other things, as well. This includes protecting an area from an overall effect that you want to apply to the rest of the image. Here’s a (somewhat trite) sample:

<http://www.pbase.com/image/26106001>

In this case, I wanted to apply the ‘motion blur’ effect but still retain a certain amount of crispness to the logo on the building.
NS
Nancy_S
Feb 16, 2004
Mark,

Loved your Dandelion image, the radiating shadows are wonderful!

Nancy
MR
Mark_Reibman
Feb 17, 2004
Thanks Nancy. It is certainly one of my favorites and the only photograph of my friends very photogenic daughter that she has allowed me to post. I didn’t even notice the shadows until I downloaded the image to my computer.
CS
Chuck_Snyder
Feb 17, 2004
I recently used the following technique to desaturate an image then recolor a portion of it.
1. Layer>Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map. Accept the default black-white gradient. This will remove the color.
2. Select black as the foreground color. Make sure the new adjustment layer is active. Use the brush tool – soft, perhaps 10-15% opacity and brush on the image where you want the color to reappear.

Advantage to using an adjustment layer is that you can easily undo and redo by switching between black and white while brushing on the adjustment layer (which is really brushing on the layer mask). Also, with the Gradient Map layer, you can adjust the stops and affect the contrast in the black-and-white portion of the image.

But just another way to do it!!
MR
Mark_Reibman
Feb 17, 2004
You’ve hit the nail on the head Chuck. The most ideal way to work with color on a b/w conversion is to 1) have some degree of control of the conversion and 2)remove or replace the pixels (undo/redo) that toggling with the x key allows with the brush on a layer mask.
RC
Richard_Coencas
Feb 17, 2004
I would select the part I want to keep in color, feather a bit, invert, and then use the Russel Brown method of two hue/sat adjustment layers (this method has been described before on the forum or can be found on the web). Adjustment layers will create a mask in the unselected area, which you can tweak and edit later and you can use Russel’s method to gain a lot of control of your B/W conversion.

Rich
MR
Mark_Reibman
Feb 17, 2004
Russel Brown site

<http://www.russellbrown.com/body.html>

Click More Tips and go to seeing in black and white
JG
Jeff_Giberson
Feb 18, 2004
Thanks everyone!!! Much appreciated!!! It’s working, now I just have to play with the contrast thing!
DS
Dick_Smith
Feb 18, 2004
John, tried to look at your image and got an error message.

Dick
J
john
Feb 19, 2004
Dick: John, tried to look at your image and got an error message.

Ooops. I changed the effect parameters on it a bit and uploaded a new copy. PBase gave the new pic a different number of course. Sorry. I’ll leave it alone now. Here is the updated link:

<http://www.pbase.com/image/26135184.jpg>

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