Isolating just one color?

SanctuS · May 9, 2008

Okay, I have seen numerous photos where someone has turned a photo B&W while just leaving one thing a certain color. For example...just a red rose...or just the stripes on a flag...or just the blue eyes...

I have been trying to GIMP for editing photos, but I am very new to it. Any suggestions or techniques anyone uses?

JimmyO · May 10, 2008

Search tutotials on selective coloring. Basicly you make 2 layers, one b&w and one color then add a mask to one and then erase what you want in color

prodigy2k7 · May 10, 2008

what he said

actually its a colored photo that you make other parts black n white

Senor Hound · May 10, 2008

I don't know if GIMP has it, but Photoshop has a cool tool that guesses where you want to select at. It will follow color lines and stuff like that. I don't know what the name of it is (I just got it a week ago, and the only thing I've done is adjusted colors), but its pretty cool. Maybe magnetic lasso? I used it on one photo, and it fairly accurately selected only this one flower I wanted to select. Then I could change the color of just that one part of the photo (I made it black and white, and purple, all sorts of things!)

Now that the idea is out there, some of these more experienced people can tell you the proper name and how to find it (I'm the idea guy...lol).

TamiyaGuy · May 10, 2008

The method I use in Gimp is very easy to use, and doesn't take long at all.

1) Import your colour photograph into Gimp (hint: NEVER take a B&W photo in-camera, you can't change it back to colour!)

2) copy that photo and paste it. The new layer should be selected.

3) Turn the "floating" layer black and white using whatever tool you want to (desaturate, greyscale, whatever).

4) Grab the Erase tool and erase around the area you want to be coloured. When you're done, just save as a JPG/TIFF/whatever.

Easy!

Senor Hound said:
I don't know if GIMP has it, but Photoshop has a cool tool that guesses where you want to select at.

Ah, yes. The GIMP does have this tool, called the Intelligent Scissors. However, I would still recommend the erase method, as it is absolutely guaranteed to get the conversion perfect, whereas the scissors, like all machines, can get a bit confused at times.