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Colour and b&w portions


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Elzbennet

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:) Hello! I am new to Photoshop, so my habilities are quite limited yet. So, i need help on something that may be simple...I took a photo of a shoe, which is black but has 2 small red balls attached to it. I wish to convert the whole photo to black and white but mantain the red colour of the balls. I was using the lasso tool to select the portion of the image i wish to put in b&w but it?s not pratical at all and didn?t work well! Is there an easy way to keep the balls intact while editing the rest of the photo to b&w?
Thank you
 
Hi Elzbennet and welcome to the forums!

While there are a zillion ways, I'm going to suggest a fairly simple one. I'd suggest duplicating the image when you first load it so you work on the Background copy layer. You do that by dragging the Background layer to the New layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette. This isn't vital but sometimes helps to have the original work available underneath everything else.

If the little red balls are really a good contrast to the rest of the image, try using the Magic Wand Tool with the default Tolerance of 32 and Contiguous checked in the Options bar. Click on one of the red balls. Did it select the whole thing? If not experiment with the Tolerance setting. If it did a good job, hold down the shift key and click on the other ball. That will add the second ball to your selection.

With both of those selected, create a new layer... Layer > New > Layer via copy.

Nest, make your Background copy active by clicking on it in the Layers palette and use the Channel Mixer. Image > Adjustments > Channel Mixer. At the bottom of the channel mixer window check Monochrome. When you first do, your image will be strange because you will be seeing 100% of the Red Channel. Drop that way back and then adjust all three channels, Red, Green, Blue until you get a B&W look that you like.

There are slightly easier ways to get a B&W image but this way gives you much more control over how it looks.

Flatten the image if you wish at that point and there you have it!

Cheers!
Welles
 
Welcome! 8))

Here is a slight alternative: create your selection using the tools you prefer (magic wand, marquee tools, lasso, etc.)

Tip: Shift adds, ALT removes from selections.

Now, invert your selection, using either the CTRL+Shift+I shortcut or in the menu Select>Inverse or even right-click in the selected area and choose "select inverse"

Now, in your layers palette, click on the black & white circle (create new fill or adjustment layer) choose channel mixer to convert to black and white as Welles explained it, or even the hue/saturation one and reduce the Saturation to zero.

The advantage of this method is that your selection has been transformed to a layer mask: you can fine-tune it by painting in white or black on the layer mask of your adjustment layer. You can even reduce the opacity of the adjustment layer to let a glimpse of color show through.

Hope this helps!
 
Another very basic way...

The PS way would be to use masks / selection tools or histoy brush but a very "basic" , almost anti PS but fool proof way, would be to use the Eraser.

Duplicate the colored layer. (Ctrl + J)
Highlight the the bottom layer then go to:
Image / Adjustment / Desaturate (Shift +Ctrl + U)

Now highlight the top layer (colored) and with the eraser, erase everything but the red balls... So now you see the red balls on the greyscaled image.

(If you right click the mouse (PC) you can change the size of the eraser for a nice big sweeping erase)
Lasa
 
Hello! :) Thank you all for the welcome and for the great help! I managed to do it finally and the result was quite nice, although not perfect! With practice i will surelly improve my work!
Thanks again!
Kisses.
 
;\ you are welcome!
Looks very good to me, ELZ!

Portugal? I've been to coimbra and figueira da foz several years ago
 
That looks stunning, Elzbennet! Nicely done and good eye!

:} :} :} :}
(the small crowd puts in an appearance)
 
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