Oh So Simple Selective Coloring Tutorial!

Hi Everyone! It's Wednesday - time for another tutorial! Yeah! I'm Jenn (jk703/The Typative Scrapper) here to share a cool new photo technique that I learned! It is so fun, and really makes for some fantastic pops to your pictures! I'm going to show you how to EASILY do selective coloring to your pictures! Easy... YES! Woot!

OK, let's get started! First, open your photo, and save a copy so the original will be available if it is ever needed. Complete any cropping, brightening or toning adjustments that you'd like. Then comes the good stuff! :) By the way, this is Colin... from last St. Patty's Day. He is my youngest, and my ham!

In the Layers Palette, click on the Adjustment icon, and then choose Hue/Saturation from the list.

Press D on your keyboard to make sure that your background and foreground colors (black and white) are back to the default setting.

With the adjustment layer selected, click on Edit in the Menu Bar, and then choose Fill.

The Fill Menu will pop up so you could change the color, add a gradient, or a bunch of other things. Make sure that white is listed. Click ok.

Now, when I look over at my Layers Palette, I see the Adjustment Palette showing. I am going to move the bar for Saturation all the way to the left. This will remove all color from the photo.

When looking at the Layers Palette, my adjustment is still selected. Make sure that your adjustment layer is selected, and your "adjustment thumbnail" is selected.

Click on the Brush Tool, and then choose a soft round brush. I used Approx. 65, soft, and at 100% opacity.

Paint over the desired areas of your photo that you want to bring color back. As you paint, the color will re-appear and the grey will disappear. Change your brush size as you get closer to edges and areas that you don't want color to appear.

See the above picture - there is some slight brown/glow showing on the upper edges around the hat. I need to fix that! So, if you accidentally paint an area that you want to stay gray, all you have to do is switch the brush color from black to white. Then paint the spots back to grey. Easy Peasy!

Hope you learned a cool technique with the easy but fun tutorial! Can't wait to see what you do with your photos!

Thanks for visiting and have a great Wednesday!
Jenn
(jk703/The Typative Scrapper)