Photoshop Picture Editing Question

[john_jcb]

My daughter got married last May and she has asked me to edit one of her pictures. What she wants is for the picture to be made black and white (easy part) but leave the bouquet in color. Anyone have an easy way to accomplish this? Thanks

 

[rickcr42]

Download Inrfanview (free and light at under 1meg total ),drag the pics in and select "monochrome".Easy as it gets John

http://www.irfanview.com/

 

[socrates63]

Download picasa from google -- it's free and has a lot of useful effects built in. It also has the feature that does just what you want. I used it turn my son's photo to b/w and colorize a lollypop. You can select the size and position of the circular area that retains the color.

 

[rickcr42]

Picassa is cool but be aware it is not a stand alone program and has a connection to the internet plus it will try to catalog every graphics file on your hard drive when it starts unless you set it just right.

Irfanview is a bloatless stand alone and FAST program that can do nearly as much as the huge packages.I use it for every format short of pdf files and that includes non-critical sound files.Does animations well too

 

[sumguy_]

Depends on the Bouquet, a circular area might not be precise enough.

In Photoshop, just create a snapshot. Then make the Photo grayscale and use the History brush to carefully revert the Bouquet area back into the original color (of the Snapshot).

I would be happy to do this for you want.

 

[RnB180]

Quote:

Originally Posted by john_jcb My daughter got married last May and she has asked me to edit one of her pictures. What she wants is for the picture to be made black and white (easy part) but leave the bouquet in color. Anyone have an easy way to accomplish this? Thanks

use the color picture as the background, then duplicate the original layer on top of the background. Then go to edit function and desaturate the top layer, then use the eraser and and erase the top portion of the picture in the boquet area. Flatten image and viola your finished.

Ive been working with digital imaging for many years along with fine arts, design and rendering. Its also a career field I will be heading in the near future. Though please don't judge my work on myphoto buckets page, all those pics are half assed by me for me

 

[sumguy_]

Heh, thats more of less the same principle...

 

[RnB180]

kind of, but layers actually give alot more flexibility imo.
the beautiful thing with photoshop are the layers. In the past when I had to design the flyers and promos for events, the larger scale images require me to have 30-40 seperate layers open

definately makes editing much easier and saves time.

 

[john_jcb]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RnB180 use the color picture as the background, then duplicate the original layer on top of the background. Then go to edit function and desaturate the top layer, then use the eraser and and erase the top portion of the picture in the boquet area. Flatten image and viola your finished. Ive been working with digital imaging for many years along with fine arts, design and rendering. Its also a career field I will be heading in the near future. Though please don't judge my work on myphoto buckets page, all those pics are half assed by me for me

I'll give it a try tonight. She has been bugging me for 6 months but my work schedule up to now has left no time for this. Thanks for the step by step.

 

[Gord SW Ont]

John - not sure if you're familiar with layer masks but if you use RnB180's workflow and, instead of using the eraser on the desaturated (B&W) layer, add a layer mask to that layer then you can paint with a black brush to reveal the colors in the layer underneath. If you reveal too much just paint with a white brush to put it back. By alternately using the black and white brushes you'll get what you're looking for in a non-destructive way.

Let us know if you need any help.

Good luck.

 

[john_jcb]

Well RnB180's instructions worked well. Pretty well except that my mouse hand kept going to sleep. I think I need some padding or chair adjustment if I am going to do many of these.

I am going to try Gord's way next but the dogs want dinner so it will have to wait a bit.

I was at the bookstore today browsing after I got my wife a couple of things and there was a book for $44 that was huge but it was nothing but instructions and pictures on how to use Photoshop. Now I know how the people at work feel when we try and teach them SAP.

 

[Edwood]

If you decide to take Photoshop to the next level, consider upgrading to a Wacom tablet.

The difference is like between drawing with a pencil, and a brick.

-Ed

 

[Edwood]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gord SW Ont John - not sure if you're familiar with layer masks but if you use RnB180's workflow and, instead of using the eraser on the desaturated (B&W) layer, add a layer mask to that layer then you can paint with a black brush to reveal the colors in the layer underneath. If you reveal too much just paint with a white brush to put it back. By alternately using the black and white brushes you'll get what you're looking for in a non-destructive way. Let us know if you need any help. Good luck.

Better yet, use a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer with a Layer Mask.

That way you can even add a Curves and another Hue/Sat Layer to tweak the image. No need for a duplicate of the original image.

Making selections is another subject matter altogether, the quick and dirty way is either painting it by hand, but even faster and better is extraction either via channels or Layer blend modes.
Otherwise if you really want to be @nal about it, and you are going to print a large photo (larger than 8x10), then curves is a better way to go.

-Ed

 

[RnB180]

Thats what I love about photoshop, there are so many ways you can attack a problem.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

but leave the bouquet in color

It sould be more than obvious why I failed the "Evelin Wood Speed Reading" course looking at my initial answer.Details suck !