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In this brief tutorial we will create a selective black and white photo using Photoshop Elements. For those of you who do not own Photoshop Elements I also made a tutorial for Picasa a litle while ago which can be reached here. I use Photoshop Elements 8 in this tutorial but the same technique do work in older versions as well. If you do not have Photoshop Elements or CS you can do the same thing in the free application Picasa, and I have the same tutorial for that application here.
This is what we will create in this tutorial:
And this is the original photo:
Step 1
Open up your photo in Elements Edit
After this step I will multi task and show two ways of creating the effect. Choose either a) or b) and follow that path.
Step 2
Create a new adjustment-layer by left-clicking on your background-layer and drag and drop this upon the icon for adjustment layer. Choose gradient map and select a map from black to white.
Step 3
Next to your adjustment-layer there is an layer-mask (the white square), select this by clicking on it. Then using a brush and black color, paint on top of the parts in the photo you would like to be in color.
There is actually a number of ways of doing the same in Elements and I will therefore show you yet another way of doing the same effect.
Step 2, Optional way
Duplicate your layer by single-clicking the layer ‘Background’ in your layers window and then pressing CTRL + J (or Command + J if you are on Mac). This will create a new layer with the same content as the layer you had selected, in other words you now have two identical layers on top of each other.
Step 3, Optional way
With you duplicated layer selected, use the erasor to erase the parts in the black and white layer where you want color. The layer underneath in color will now instead show.
There, we’re all set and have learnt two ways of doing this effect in Photoshop Elements!
Using Photoshop there is a very quick way of achieving this effect on some photos. Even though it work on lots of different subjects it goes extra well on macro shots where background is blown out, often in a short range on color.
