Adding Focus To An Image With Color In Photoshop
Learn Photoshop with Photo Effects Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com
Summary: Thanks to the power and flexibility of Photoshop's adjustment layers, we can easily bring more focus and attention to the main subject of an image using color, an effect that's very popular with sports and wedding photography.
Written by Steve Patterson
Exclusively for Photoshop Essentials.com.
Part of our complete collection of Photo Effects tutorials.
In this Photoshop Effects tutorial, we're going to look at an effect that's very popular with sports and wedding photography, as well as in advertising. We're going to learn how to bring focus and attention to part of an image by making the rest of the image black and white while leaving the main subject in full color.
As we'll see, the flexibility of a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer not only makes this incredibly easy, it also gives us lots of freedom and control over the final effect, allowing us to colorize the image if we choose rather than leaving it black and white, and even enabling us to bring some of the photo's original color back in, all with very little effort.
Here's the photo I'll be using for this tutorial:
And here's the final effect we're after:
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Let's get started.
Step 1: Select The Part Of The Image You Want To Have Remain In Color
With our image open in Photoshop, the first thing we need to do is decide which part of the image we want to have remain in full color. In my case, I want the three horses and their jockeys in the foreground to remain in color. The rest of the image will become black and white. Once you've decided which part of your image will remain in color, use whichever selection tool you prefer (Lasso tool, Pen Tool, etc.) to select it:
Step 2: Invert The Selection
We now have the area(s) of the image that will remain in color selected. Problem is, we actually want the exact opposite. We want all the areas we'll be removing the color from selected, not the areas where we're keeping the color. Fortunately, all we need to do is invert the selection, which will select everything that's not currently selected and deselect everything that is currently selected. To do that, you can either go up to the Select menu at the top of the screen and choose Inverse, or you can use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+I (Win) / Shift+Command+I (Mac). Now all of the areas that will become black and white are selected, and the areas that will remain in color are not:
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