black and white with the use of selective colors

[otsink]

Nice shots. I've been interested in trying this approach. Can you outline the basic process for doing this? Thks

[otsink]

My Bad; Late to the party. I guess I started on page 3 instead of page 1 

[Quasimodo]

Nice pics. Good to see other people's work. Thanks for posting. Colour popping can be used too much, but then so can HDR and other effects. It can look really nice.

This is one of mine. It's taken using picture styles (skd picture style, can't remeber if it was Ruby or Perl, they both desaturate green). I was going to crop but I quite like it as it is as it provides a sense of scale.

Very nice!:)
I think it is fun to explore this approach. However, sa I am very new to photoshop, I have not yet learned to use mask tool yet, so when I try to make the black white part rougher, it affects the part with the colors too....

[scrappydog]

Nice shots. I've been interested in trying this approach. Can you outline the basic process for doing this? Thks

What tools do you use?  I used Photoshop, which has Adobe RAW built in.  My examples will reference these tools, although similar techniques can be used with other programs with similar functionality.

First, you can play around with the saturation levels of different colors to emphasize/deemphasize them.  For example, a lady bug in the grass -- desaturate the green (grass), and boost the saturation of orange/red (lady bug) and the bug will pop out in the shot.

Another technique is to "paint" pictures.  I posted a couple shots where I did this.  the steps are as follows: create a layer over your background shot, select the brush tool, pick a color, paint on it, and set the opacity.  For example, to create "pink" cheeks, I painted red splotches where her cheeks are, set the opacity low (e.g., 10%), and it appears like a soft addition of pinkish color.  I probably feathered the edges to create a soft blend.

[otsink]

I'm on CS3, I'll do some experimenting. Thanks much.

[CanonCameraFan]

My method for the ladybird picture was even simpler. The picture was taken in RAW using the neutral picture style. In the conversion I changed the picture style - I have three that preserve red in the photo (Ruby, Perl and Only Red). These all give different effects. Ruby and Perl desaturate green but keep the other colours, Only Red keeps only the red. I played around with the additional picture styles on the Canon website before searching for more. I found the downloadable SKD picture styles on Cinescopophilia and a few elsewhere now have loads. I've also fiddled about making one or two of my own using the picture style editor.

I didn't have to do anything except swap the picture style, apply sharpening and tweak the contrast and shadows before converting to JPEG. Job done. Admittedly this method is a bit of a cheat and I already had the picture style file but it was fairly instant.

[bycostello]

hate to say, spot colour a bit 1980s...

[scrappydog]

One other technique you can also try is to take a picture in color, import it to Photoshop, create a mask around the item you want to pop with color.  With the remaining portion is selected, desaturate it.  I would probably duplicate the layer at the beginning so that if you make a mistake, you can try again.

[MazV-L]

hate to say, spot colour a bit 1980s...

Oh well, I think it's more to do with the story you're trying to convey through the picture and your own style (or what a client wants)  than what trends attempt to dictate.

Not all photos  lend themselves to this style anyway.

[RLPhoto]

Here was a good Use for this technique on a commercial client.

[Quasimodo]

Here was a good Use for this technique on a commercial client.

This is nice, and quite tough too if you use the same method of brushing the colors forward as I do (given the straws and all:)

80's or not... Photography in itself is also pretty old:)

[mjardeen]

This is not a technique I use very often, but it seemed to be the right thing to do with this image.


Signs, signs, everywhere signs by mjardeen, on Flickr

[!Xabbu]

I don't do this a lot, but I liked the effect on this one...

[unruled]

"Over-exposed"   



Came across this roll of film while hiking last March.

only shot ive ever seen where I like the effect. probably the implied irony.

[kasperj]

Here I used the effect on the blood trickling out from the skin to make a more dramatic picture. I used Nic Silver Efex pro, which I can strongly recommend. It is by far my favorite add-on to Lightroom.