How to Make Black & White Photos With One Color

There is no need to be extreme to get a great photo effect.

Photographic effects can alter the meaning of an image, or add a new layer of depth to a piece. There are several popular photographic effects, but selective color editing is one of the most recognizable. This is the process in which a photograph is changed into black and white, leaving only one color or object in color, or an already black and white photograph is modified to include a color.

Things You'll Need

• Photograph
• Adobe Photoshop

Instructions

1. Upload your photograph or scan it and save it as a jpeg or jpg, so that it can be opened in Adobe Photoshop.

2. Decide which area you would like to remain in color. If your photo is high contrast enough, you can use the magic wand tool and click on the area to select it. If the image has a lot of shading or a lot of ambiguous blacks, the magic wand may not work. In this case, the magnetic lasso tool, with which you manually circle the selection area, will be the best tool to use.

3. Invert the selected area by clicking select>inverse. This will highlight everything except your previously chosen color area.

4. Convert the rest of the image to black and white by selecting image>adjustments>black and white or gray scale.

5. Add color. If your image was already black and white and you wanted to add color to a selected area, use the magic wand or magnetic lasso and then go to image>adjustments>hue/saturation. This will change the subtle levels of gray in the selection in a more realistic fashion than using paint bucket, which will be too bold and which will look fake.

References

• Adobe Photoshop CS5: Convert an Image to Black and White