Selective Coloring

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

This is my first attempt at selective coloring, so please critique as much as you can, let me know what adjustments would improve this. It's another untitled work in progress, so please feel free to toss out names as well. I think it may be oversharpened, but you tell me....

Digital Matt · Jan 19, 2005

It's a beautiful photo Amanda

I can see some errors in yourselecting though. Around the neckline, andalong the lower leftof the clothing. There's also a ton of jpgcompression artifactsand/or sharpening artifacts, which make it hard totell about someother areas. I think you might have oversharpened it andsaved ita bit too lossy. How did you do the selective coloring? Ifyouhave photoshop, and you use a channel mixer adjustment layer toconvertto black and white, and then mask off the areas you want incolor, ifyou make a mistake, you can go back and fix it at any time.

-edit: Notice all the spaces it took out?

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

Matt, thanks for the reply. I found a basic tutorial on the internet and followed the steps for the process, however it seems like there are better ways to go about it. First I desaturated the photo, then clicked the history tool (and selected before the desaturation), and just went over the part I wanted in color, I tried to zoom in and get the parts around the neckline especially, but had difficulty as you can tell. I will start over with the original and give it another try...oh I also sharpened afterwards, which definitely didn't help it much. Thanks for the tips, I'll work on it and post another after I finish

Oh by the way I have noticed the spacing in your posts, but only yours...which is odd. Hopefully someone can figure out why it's doing that for you

But still I appreciate the help coming from the master of PS even if the spacing isn't perfect

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

Here's another attempt...used the same method as earlier, but didn't sharpen this time. It's still by far from perfection...there's something about his left shoulder where the shoulder meets the background that doesn't look right.

Digital Matt · Jan 19, 2005

Looks better Amanda!

The photo still has bad artifacts though.Are you using Save for Web, and if so, what quality? His leftshoulder appears to have a streak of color, probably from the jpgcompression.

You should familiarize yourself with the channel mixer. It's anadjustment layer, and lets you control the look of your B&Wmore. Not to say that this looks bad, but you can have morecontrol with the channel mixer. Also, it has a built in layermask, and if you do your selective color that way, you'll never have tostart over again from scratch.

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

Thanks Matt, I went back again and tried it the way you said...here's what I came up with:

As far as saving goes, I have just saved as jpeg, at the highest quality, then upload to village photos, and post here. I'm not familiar with photoshop at all...this is my 4th or 5th time ever to even use it, so I'm still learning. Am I saving it correctly??? It seems that somewhere between saving it and putting it on village photos that it becomes really oversharpenedlooking (ran it all together just so you wouldn't be the only one with a spacing problem) :wink:

Again thanks for the help!!!

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

One more thing, do you think it needs cropped b/c the bottom left corner seems a blown to me, I tried the crop...looks okay, but would appreciate any thoughts you may have regarding that as well

Digital Matt · Jan 19, 2005

Do you mean cropping off the left side? I think it would make the photo awful skinny. I think you would need to crop the top closer to the head then also, but I like headroom.

I don't think it's distracting or anything.

Nikon Fan · Jan 19, 2005

Okay I played around with the crop again...and it does make it wayyyyy too skinny, I prefer space around as well, and it gives a very cramped feel with the crop. Thanks again for all the help, it means a lot coming from the PS Master :hail: :hail: :hail: I'll keep working on it, and hopefully will eventually get better!!!