Take a black & white photo and add some color to it and you have a picture that says, “Hey, look at me!” But how do you do that?
There are two methods: The messy one that’s expensive. And the easy one that isn’t. Tough choice, huh?
The old fashioned method is done with special paints designed for black & white photos. They produce beautiful results, but they are expensive, have to be used in a well-ventilated space, take practice to master (adding further to the cost), and are time consuming. And if you make a mistake? Ugh! Also, your picture needs to be developed on a special type of paper, which isn’t used by all photofinishers.
The other method requires the use of a software package such as Photoshop Elements 7 (Wow, I’m still using the third edition!). You can either scan your photos (if you use film) or download them from your digital camera.
To achieve the above results, just follow these simple directions adapted from Scott Kelby’s brilliant book, The Photoshop Element 3 Book for Digital Photographers.
- Open the color photo you wish to work on. Sorry, this method doesn’t work on a photo that’s already black & white.
- Press Ctrl-j. You’ve just copied the Background layer.
- Press b (brush tool) and chose a soft-edge brush from the BRUSH PICKER in the OPTIONS BAR. Select the size of brush according to the area you wish to cover.
- In the OPTIONS BAR, change the MODE to ‘color’.
- Press d (foreground color) and begin painting the parts of the photo you want to convert to black & white.
- If you make a mistake, you can erase it (press e) by painting over it with the eraser. This will bring back the original color.
Now wasn’t that easy? But what do you do if you want to change the color of the object to something else? Well, that’s a future tip.
Have fun!