Selective Colouring or Black+White with Colour

Jaffapie · Jun 28, 2004

sobi that is wonderful

simnine · Jun 29, 2004

does duotone count?

CrazyAva · Jul 1, 2004

Wow, some really great pictures! Here are a couple that I have done............I don't know why but mine won't show up, so you have to click them, hope you don't mind......

http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4da11b3127ccebd9e3b03cd0f0000003610
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4d809b3127cceb171d7dbb9e10000001610
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b4d808b3127cceb16e4a7881f30000001610

DarkEyes · Jul 1, 2004

Edited due to broken linkhttp://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=14000di

Camper Dave · Jul 2, 2004

jadin · Jul 2, 2004

Reviewing images for the Critque Club for this challenge, I've realized a few things.

Choosing a photo:
For starters, the photo you choose is very important. Having a chaotic shot works very well. Having a relatively calm shot does not. Let me explain.

When you desaturate all but a small portion of a photo, the part left in color becomes the foreground. Everything else becomes the background. This means leaving the background in color, and the foreground black and white, the background becomes the foreground. It's where your eye goes to first. Keeping this in mind when choosing a shot will help you leaps and bounds.

A bland background desaturated:

As you can see there is virtually no impact on the photo. There's barely any change, especially none that would draw your interest to an area of the photo where you wouldn't normally think.

Compare that to using a chaotic picture, where you see the colored object(s) as the foreground right off the bat. Only after which your eye allows you to look at the rest of the picture.

A chaotic photo selectively desaturated:

There are better examples obviously but these at least demonstrate my point.

Choosing what to desaturate:
Since your creating a new foreground in essence, you only want that foreground in color. If you keep other parts that you don't consider part of the new foreground in color, you're only detracting from the impact the selective desaturation provides.

You've learned that distractions are best cropped out of your photos, so why would you put a spot light on parts of the photo you don't want highlighted?

Highlighting extra information:

And really that's the whole gist of it. I have a bright spotlight to shine on my photo. What do I want to highlight, and what do I want to mute.

Choosing the right photo, and the right thing(s) to highlight are essential to a good selective desaturation. The rest is just your photoshop skills.