Visitor request: Make a single object in a photo colored

There are some methods and techniques to make an object in a photo stand out. Some of them can be done with a camera, some of them are digital manipulations. One of our visitors wanted to know how to separate an object from the entire composition by making it the only thing in color and all the other space grayscale. I'll shortly explain 2 methods of doing that.

Preparation

First we need an image to apply the effect to. I've used this picture from deviantart:

It's not the best picture to use, because the blue castle that we'll leave colored is already standing out pretty well. But it really makes no difference since you'll be able to apply the methods explained to any other picture as well. I've decided to cut the bottom part of the picture to make it look better (at least for me), so i've taken the crop tool and left only the following selection:

I've also decided to apply a levels filter to increase the intensity of black around the blue castle. Press CTRL+L for levels and apply these settings:

And the final image should look like that:

You don't have to crop it if you don't want to - it won't make any difference to the methods we'll use for object separation.

Method 1 - Masking

This method works well for pictures where you have the object surrounded by pure white, black color or any shades of gray. In other words. Also it can be useful when you want to make parts of the object more colorful than other parts. First thing to do is duplicate the current layer (CTRL+J). Now select the top layer and press CTRL+SHIFT+U). That should make it grayscale. So we now have a colored image and a grayscale version of the same image on top. And if we delete the contents of the top layer - the bottom layer will be visible through. So if we delete the castle from the top layer - a colored version of it will be visible from the layer in the bottom. I don't like using an eraser tool so we'll mask a part of this layer instead of deleting it. If you don't know what masks are and how they work, you can familiarize yourself with them in my non destructive deletion with layer masks tutorial. To add a mask on the top layer, select it and click on the layer mask button

in the layers panel. A white rectangle should appear next to the layer's thumbnail. Then grab a black soft brush and set its opacity to a low value like shown below:

Zoom in on a castle and start paintint along the edges. Remember that your brush is only partially opaque so you have to click a few times in the same place to completely mask that area. You can use a 100% opaque brush if you want, but using a more transparent brush can be helpful when working with the object's edges: if you click on a wrong spot accidently, you might not even see the difference and can continue working. In this particular image you don't need to be very careful with the edges that have black sky arround them, because the sky is black in both grayscale and colored image: it won't make any difference if you accidently mask the sky from the top layer, because it looks exactly the same on the lower one. But in any other case or even with the lower edges of the castle you need to be more careful. And remember: [ and ] keys are your friends! Use them to decrease/increase the brush size when you work. So do the edges first to leave the easiest part for later :) Here's how it looks now:

Now you can paint the rest of the castle in. You can increase the opacity of the brush now since you don't have to bee as careful as you had to be with the edges. So go ahead and paint the rest of the castle:

And that's it - you have a colored castle in the middle of a grayscale picture. If you're comfortable with using a pen tool, read about the next technique.

Part 2 - Selection

Another way of doing it selecting the object and then deleting it from the upper layer. Basically in the first technique all of your effort was concentrated in painting on the castle and in this technique it will be concentrated in making a selection. And, unfortunately ... it won't be easier. Both techniques are not very easy, but if you're comfortable with using a pen tool rather than brushing things, you might wanna use this technique instead. I'm not going to explain how the pen tool works, because i myself have a limited understanding of its functionality and i don't feel i could explain it the understandable way. So if you don't know what a pen tool is and how to use it - use the first technique. OK let's get back to the tutorial. I'm not going to make the same object colored, because in my opinion it's too complex to be selected with a pen tool and it's easier to be using the first technique (unless you make a very round selection, considering the black background around it). So let's make this little guy colored:

You can use the same two layer setting from the firt technique. If you haven't read it: duplicate the colored layer (CTRL+J) and press CTRL+SHIFT+U to desaturate the duplicate. So now grab the pen tool

from the tools palette and make a selection around the object. I'm using the same picture i made for the first technique so it will result in two colored objects. Before doing the selection, make sure the pen tool is set to paths mode:

Here's my selection of the lower part:

Right-click in the selection area and select Make Selection .... When you finally have the path converted to a selection - simply hit the DEL key to delete this part from the upper layer (make sure it's selected first):

I forgot to do the upper part, so had to draw another selection of it and delete from the upper layer as well:

So now you know two methods for applying this effect. But don't get tricked by the easiness of this tutorial - you will have to add a fair amount of work to make sure you don't color the parts you don't need to color. Anyway, this is all the theory you need to know to make this work so good luck and have fun!