Quick Photoshop Tutorial

Lately I've been emphasizing what color it what in my color rotation.  I am going to explain how I do it.  It is much easier than how I used to do it so I thought I would share.

I am using CS4 here.

Step 1: Open Image

Step 2: Select the Magic Wand Tool

Step 3: Click on something that you want to select (Orange shirt in this picture)
Set the Tolerance to 70 or so at first.  Hold Shift and click another area.  The shirt has a few shadows so it does not all pick up at one time.
Adjust the Tolerance to 20 (or so) and click on the last few details along the edges.  Remember to hold shift.  You can backup at any time also if you select something and it actually selects a much larger area.   I always leave Contiguous checked for a solid shirt. If the shirt is striped, I uncheck that.

Now everything should be elected that you want to remain a color.

Step 4: Select>Inverse (Or Shift+Ctrl+I)

Step 5: Image>Adjustments>Desaturate  (Or Shift+Ctrl+U)

There you have it!

That's all there is to it.  

I used to use layers to create partial color and partial black and white.  This would have saved me tons of time.  I edited a ton of my wedding pictures. Now I want to go back and edit more with this quick way of doing things. 

If you want to adjust the color a little you go to Select>Inverse and then go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and play around.

What do you think? Can you do it?


I have a few more tutorials up my sleeves but I'm not sure if they are good enough or not.