Color Spotting Layers in Photoshop

I’m going to attempt to explain how to produce a black and white photo with areas of color (like this or this) for those who were interested. If you have trouble, email me and I’ll see if I can help. (Wendy, feel free to comment if I leave something out!)

I use Photoshop (5.0 Limited at home and Creative Suite 7.0 at work). I don’t think it matters for this task. In Photoshop, open up the color photograph that you would like to alter. Crop it to your liking and save the file. Then, under Image, select “mode” and then “greyscale” to turn the picture to black and white. Save the new black and white image with a new file name. With both the color and black and white versions open, use the “rectangular marquee tool” to select the whole black and white image. Then use the “move tool” to slide the image over on top of the color image. Move the black and white image as necessary to completely cover the color image. Under “window” select “layers”. When you click on the window that contains the color photo with the b&w overlay, you should see two layers appear in the “layers” tool bar. The black and white layer is “Layer 1” and the color layer is “background”. You may now close the window that contains the black and white photo that you copied from.

In the layers tool box, click on the color “background layer” and then select “create new fill or adjustment layer” at the bottom of that tool bar. It will give you a set of options, choose any of them (it doesn’t matter. I usually choose “levels”) and then click okay. Now you have three layers. The top one is the b&w image, called “Layer 1”, the middle one has two squares on it, one that shows the levels and one that is all white. The bottom one is still the “background” or color image.

Now, you need to join this new adjustment layer with the background layer. To do this, hold your cursor over the edge between the adjustment layer and the background layer (on the layer tool box). You should get a hand with a pointing finger. When you do, hold down the “alt” key and a new symbol will come up (linked circles) then click. Now your two images are linked together.

The next step is to fill the adjustment layer with all black fill. To do this, select the adjustment Layer (by clicking on it in the Layer box), make sure your color that is selected on your tool bar is black, select the bucket icon and “fill” the Layer with black by clicking on the image. (Note, the image itself will not change in appearance, only the layer icon on the layer box should change to all black).

Now you are ready to begin working.

Select Layer 1 (the black and white layer) from your layer box. I use the magnifying glass to zoom in on one corner of my black and white image. I try to zoom in until I can really see the pixels. Then select the eraser tool, but you want the eraser with the scissors over it (for background eraser. If you don’t have this icon, right click on the eraser icon and select the one that has the scissors over it, the “background eraser tool”.). Once you select this tool, you will have new options on the top tool bar, including the option to change the size of the diameter of the eraser. You want to make the diameter very small (5) when you are working around the edges. Working on Layer 1, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor along the edges of your image that you want to have in color. As you move, the color will “bleed through” so you can see where you have painted. If you make a mistake, go to “edit” then “step backwards” to remove the last portion. Note: as you move along, let up on the mouse click from time to time (use small, shorter movements) to allow yourself to correct small mistakes without undoing a whole section.) You only need to outline the WHOLE of the image you want to turn color. For example, in the image I used with the apple and the leaf, I don’t need to outline the leaf where it overlaps the apple. Just the whole of the outline around both. When you get a good outline, you can change the diameter size of your eraser and just swipe it over the bigger areas to bring out the color. When you are done, you can zoom back out and view the piece with the parts in color that you just “painted” and the rest black and white!

There are two ways to save the image, depending on what you want to do with it. If you want to be able to go back and work on the individual layers again, do NOT flatten the image. Just save it as a PSD (Photoshop document) and leave it alone. If you are done with the image and you want to use it (and make it a smaller file!) go to “layer” on the top tool bar and then “flatten image” then save this as a jpg.

I tried to walk through this as I went to make sure I didn’t miss any steps, but if something is unclear or doesn’t work for you, please let me know! As I said before, Wendy was a tremendous help teaching me how to do this! I will try to post explanations when I learn something new!