Sin city effect C&C Please

[Ankit]

 

[Foxx]

Let me tell you what everyone else is going to tell you: It's very hard to make selective coloring work well in a photo -- this is no exception.

Also, for more general C&C -- Why did you take this shot with such a low shutter speed? Shooting at 1/25 blurred your photo, you've lost most of the sharpness in this shot. If you brought the ISO up to 200 or 400 you would have had much better results(higher shutter speed). Also, shooting that wide(f/5.3) you missed the DoF for the back tomato. Try using a smaller aperture(around f/8) for better results. Lastly, if the tomatoes were your subject you should have filled the frame more. Get closer to the subject, we(as a viewer) don't need all the extra foliage on all sides of the shot, at f/8 we'll be able to tell what the context for the subjects is from the background even if you fill the frame with the tomatoes.

Anyways, just my opinion.

 

[tirediron]

+1 ^^

 

[RebeccaAPhotography]

+2^^

 

[DiskoJoe]

If you are going to go sin city. use a city! I have been told many times that people are reminded of Sincity by this pic....

canal red by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

Sin City had lots of red elements

 

[DiskoJoe]

Here are some others I did.

This one had a really busy background. So I used this technique to draw attention to the figures, me and my wife.

joe and alesia by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

I really liked this duck head sculpture but the background was horrible. So it works well here too to distract ffrom the mess occuring in the background.

sparepart duckhead select by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

This one here is more subtle which is what I would recommend when using this technique. It is best if people do not realize it instantly.

STL cemetary select by DiskoJoe, on Flickr

 

[Ankit]

Thanks

 

[RedLeg]

i have to figure out how to do this. love the duck photo.

 

[DiskoJoe]

i have to figure out how to do this. love the duck photo.

i do it with layering in photoshop. I open the original then copy a layer mask. i turn the copy bw and then use the cut tool to chop out what I want to be in color or you can use the saturation controls to desaturate everything else. I used a mix of both these methods here. There are plug ins you can buy too but as little as I do this I would rather just do it the hard way and save $100.

 

[Forkie]

i have to figure out how to do this.

No. No you don't.

If you avoid it, you could be the first ever photographer never to bother with selective colouring. You'll be worshipped as a f*****g GOD!

 

[blackrose89]

i have to figure out how to do this.

No. No you don't.

If you avoid it, you could be the first ever photographer never to bother with selective colouring. You'll be worshipped as a f*****g GOD!

I own that title so far actually. I've never attempted selective coloring.

 

[Foxx]

i have to figure out how to do this.

No. No you don't.

If you avoid it, you could be the first ever photographer never to bother with selective colouring. You'll be worshipped as a f*****g GOD!

I own that title so far actually. I've never attempted selective coloring.

Nor have I :thumbup:

 

[cardonalj]

No. No you don't.

If you avoid it, you could be the first ever photographer never to bother with selective colouring. You'll be worshipped as a f*****g GOD!

I own that title so far actually. I've never attempted selective coloring.

Nor have I :thumbup:

theres more than we think lol. i too have not tried it...

 

[Sw1tchFX]

oh my god.

 

[brush]

Selective color isn't a photography technique, it's a design technique...and I'll leave my opinion on it out of this post because you'll hear the same opinion from most people so there's no need to rehash it. I'm a photographer for fun and a designer for a living, which means this image is right in my wheelhouse to C&C. You masked it very poorly, you can see spots where you went over the edge & surrounding leaves are green, as well as spots where you didn't make it to the edge & the fruit is gray. Did you use a layer mask, or did you just duplicate the layer & make that copy B&W then erase the pieces you wanted to be color? I'm betting on the latter...try using an adjustment layer with a mask. If you need help using an adjustment layer, search for a tutorial on Youtube, it's pretty visual otherwise I'd explain it here. Once you're up to speed on that, you can mask out the fruit, then use the Refine Mask tool to turn on smart radius & find exactly where the edge is, then feather it slightly...smooth out any nastiness, and get a perfect separation between the B&W portions & color portions of your image. And the best part of masking vs. deleting, its not permanent. You can always edit the mask to add or remove more color.