Photography 101 - How to Color Only Portions of Your Photograph

I love black and white photography. But what I love more is black and white photography with an emphasis on a particular color element, like the one above. It just adds a little something and can really make a photograph pop. This is super easy to do and I'll tell you how. I use Photoshop CS3 for my photo editing.

Step One - choose a color photograph that you have. (The original photo has to be color and then it's converted to black and white.)

Step Two - open your color photograph in Photoshop

Step Three - make a copy of the background layer, so you've essentially got two layers of your color photograph. (Go to Layer > New > Layer from Background)

Step Four - convert the top layer to black and white. (Select top layer > Go to Image > Adjustments > Black and White > make adjustments as necessary until you're happy with how it looks)

Step Five - staying on the top layer that you've converted to black and white, choose the color element that you want to expose and simply erase away the black and white layer portion. This will expose the color behind and leave you with cool photos like these:



And there we have it. Pretty easy way to make your photos pop. You can see more examples of how I use this affect on photos by visiting www.TrishBarkerPhotography.com.

Have fun!