Photoshop Inverted Colors Photo Effect
Learn Photoshop with Photo Effects Tutorials at Photoshop Essentials.com
Written By Steve Patterson
In this Photoshop tutorial, we're going to look at how to invert the colors in an image to create interesting photo effects.
Most people would agree that taking a stroll through the forest can be very calming and peaceful, with all of its natural green and brown colors. But who says forests have to be green and brown? Certainly no one with a copy of Photoshop. We can have any colors we want in our images, and in this tutorial, we'll see how easy it is to flip nature upside down and invert its colors, creating a strange, even mystical appearance.
Here's the photo I'll be starting with:
And here's the finished "inverted colors" effect:
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Let's get started!
Step 1: Select Any People In The Image And Place Them On A Separate Layer
In my image, there's a young guy strolling along through the forest. I'm going to be inverting the colors in the forest, but I want him to keep his original colors, which means I'll need to select him and place him on his own layer. To do that, I'll grab the Lasso Tool from the Tools palette:
Then, with the Lasso Tool selected, I'll draw a selection outline around him:
Once I have him selected, I'll go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, choose New, and then choose Layer via Copy, or I could simply use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac):
Either way tells Photoshop to copy my selected area of the photo on to its own layer, and we can see in the Layers palette that the guy now appears on his own layer directly above the Background layer. Photoshop has automatically named the new layer "Layer 1":
Step 2: Duplicate The Background Layer
Next, we need to duplicate our Background layer. Since we currently have "Layer 1" selected, we'll need to select the Background layer by clicking on it in the Layers palette. You can tell which layer is selected because the currently selected layer is always highlighted in blue:
Then, to duplicate the Background layer, I'll use the same method we used a moment ago to copy the selection to a new layer. But this time, rather than going up to the Layer menu, choosing New and then choosing Layer via Copy, I'll simply use the faster keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). When you have something on a layer selected as we did earlier, Photoshop copies only the selected area to a new layer. When nothing on the layer is selected, Photoshop considers everything on the layer to be selected and copies the entire layer to a new layer directly above the original. We can see in the Layers palette that a copy of the Background layer now sits between the original Background layer and "Layer 1":
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