Welcome to another edition of Ruby Red Tuesday’s Digital Tutorial. This week I would like to demonstrate how to apply a Reverse Black and White effect to an image in Photoshop Elements. I am sure you have all seen images where most of the image is in black and white and just a selected area or color is visible. I have used this techniques a few times like earlier this year to highlight the coloring of a rose from our community garden and I used it several times this past week on a project I was working on for a Photography Scholarship.
First you will need to open up Photoshop Elements (PSe) in “Edit” mode and then open a color image that you want to apply this effect to. Here is the image I will be demonstrating on as I would like to highlight the letter “H” in this photograph:
Second step: Select the “Smart Brush Tool” from the tool palate in PSe.
Third step: Select “Reverse Black and White” from the Brush toolbar on top.
Fourth Step: You may want to Zoom in to better see the object you will be leaving colored.
Fifth Step: Make sure your “Smart Brush Tool” is turned on, then drag your cursor over the part of the image that you wish to remain colored. PSe will automatically apply a grayscale effect to the rest of the image.
As you can see in this photo (arrow pointing to green grass beneath the letter) that I have selected too much of the image to remain colored.
Step six: You need to deselect the pixels that you do not want colorized by first clicking on the brush with the minus sign next to it. You can either choose the “deselect Brush” from the top toolbar or click on the floating brush on your image as pointed out in this photo.
This is how you selection should look after you have refined your selection around the object you want to remain colorized.
And this is how the final image turned out:
I hope that you have found today’s Digital Tutorial useful. If there is something in particular you would like to learn about digital photography or digital scrapbooking, I would love your input for future Digital Tutorials. You can contact me by clicking on the “Got a Question?” on the navigational menu at the top of this page. Until next week…
