Some photographs looked a bit more striking when only a part of the photograph is colored. It gives focus to a part of the photograph and sometimes, it can be quite humorous as well. Here is one way of doing selective coloring in Adobe Photoshop CS4. We’ll be using the picture below and will make everything black and white except the man with the blue shirt.
Open up Photoshop with the image given above and click on Layer -> Duplicate Layer or Ctrl+J. You will see that there will be 2 layers and name this new one Black & White (or something obvious).
Once that is done, click on Image -> Adjustment -> Hue/Saturation and change the Saturation bar to the extreme left so that all color in the new layer is taken out. The original layer on the other hand, is not affected.
Now for the fun part: click on the Eraser tool and start erasing the old man and his clothes at the Black & White layer.
The edges might be a bit trickier so it is recommended to use a feathered brush (or brush that is a bit blur instead of the sharp edged ones). Use a smaller size to make the work a bit more accurate. And there you have it: Selective coloring in Photoshop.
