Tuesday Tip: Coloring Selectively for Emphasis

A+ Designs Newsletter June 22nd - http://eepurl.com/EkEd

Have you ever wondered how others come up with a photo with a differently colored subject? I am not sure how experts call it but others refer to it as "selective coloring." It works in such a way that you color your main subject differently from the rest of the photo. Here is one I made:

I applied the technique to the middle photo leaving the subjects colored while the rest of the image was desaturated or turned to black and white. To give even more emphasis, I added a clustered frame.

In this kit, I used Mel's colorful Festive Euphony Kit and Zesty Spice Kit together. They are both available in her stores at Gotta Pixel and Scrapbook-Bytes.


So, how did I do it?

1. Open your photo in Photoshop. Using any selection tools (Marquee or Lasso Tools), select your main subject in the photo. Press CTRL-SHIFT-I so the selected area would be shifted to the rest of the image excluding the main subject.

2. Click on Image from the menu bar, click Adjustments, then choose Desaturate.

3. Voila! Now your main subject is left colored while the rest of the photo is not.

This technique is also used when you want to edit only some parts of a photo. You can apply filters or edit the selected image in any way you want. There are in fact hundreds of similar tutorials that you might want to check in the web. The good thing with Photoshop is, you can work your way in different steps and still be able to achieve the same effect. You only need to experiment and practice. This one so far has been the easiest way for me to achieve such effect.

Well, that's it for now. We hope you learned something from us today. We would appreciate any comments from you if you liked this tip and you can tell us if you need to learn anything more. We'd also love to see what you've come up with using this technique. Just leave us some love and a link to what you did.

Have fun! and don't forget, you can check Mel's designs at Gotta Pixel and Scrapbook-bytes :)

Until next time!

Noemi D.