Web Design Tutorials Made Easy

As promised in an earlier tutorial, here is the second method for highlighting or silouetting a little color from a full color photograph. This is a better method in my opinion for two reasons. First it leaves the original photo untouched (which is a prefered method by professionals). Secondly, it can allow you to further manipulate the photo later.

Let’s get started.

Step 1:

Duplicate the layer. You can do this by hitting cmd+J (ctrl+J on the PC) or go to Layer > Duplicate Layer.

Step 2:

With the new layer selected zoom into the area or areas you’d like to eventually have the color. Hit Q on your keyboard to enter quick mask mode. Now grab your paint brush and start painting in the area you want. You should get a pinkish looking color in this area, don’t worry this isn’t ruining your photo. Once you have the area completely painted in, its time to go back to standard editing mode. To do this just hit the Q on your keyboard again. You should now have a selection around the area you just painted in. If you see parts of it are not quite in the selection just go back into quick mask mode and paint those areas in.

Outlining:

Filling in my outline:

After done and back in standard editing mode:

Step 3:

Now just invert your selection by pressing cmd+shift+I (ctrl+shift+I on the PC) or Select > Inverse.

Step 4:

It’s time for the magic now, just desaturate the current selection by pressing cmd+shift+U (ctrl+shift+U on the PC) or Image > Adjustments > Desaturate. See our final photograph, with the before and after below.

Before:

After:

That’s it. At any time you can always just delete this new layer and you still have your original photo untouched. Hopefully you’ll find a method that works for you and feel free to share it with everyone. Until next time, stay focused!