Tenacious Creations

 As with anything in Photoshop there are multiple ways to achieve the same effect. What we are going to do here is turn a color photo to black and white, then restore color in the area we want to draw attention to. There are several different ways you can high light with color. I will show you a very simple way and my preferred method in this tutorial.

 Below is the original image that I am going to use to demonstrated highlighting with color. Open up the image you want to do this to in Photoshop and follow along.

 
 

 
 

1. First thing to do is to make a copy of the original layer. Select the layer in the Layers Palette and type Ctrl + J.
2. Then make sure your new layer is selected and type Shift+Ctrl+U to desaturate the image.

 
 


 


3. Now we want to restore the color in the part of the photo we want to draw attention to. In my case I am going to use the focal point of the picture - the little boy. But this is a great technique to use to draw your viewers attention away from the center of the photo. To restore the color select the Eraser Tool . Set the brush size to a little smaller than the area you want to highlight.

 
 

 
 

4. Now you need to decide if you want the color separation from the black and white to hard and crisp or soft and flowing. For my example I will go with hard and crisp, to do this I make sure the hardness of my eraser brush is 100%. If I wanted it soft I would lower the hardness of my eraser brush. Now you simple erase away the black and white to reveal the color in the areas you want.

 Like I said in the beginning this is a very easy effect to achieve. If you don’t feel comfortable using the eraser you can also make a quick mask and then delete that area. Below is the finished picture.

 
 

 

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