Selective Color

Hi All -


I have a quick (and maybe dumb)question to throw out there. It's mainly out of curiousity of how programs work.


I have used a couple different programs on occaisionwhere I wanted to do a selective color application. I change the photo to B&W and then use a brush tool to "paint-in" the original color in certain areas. Many times (but not all the time) the color that is brought back in does not look at all like the color from the original photo. What causes this? Is it the program being used, some just being more accurate? Is it my way of using the application due to the hardness of the brush application or opacity? Or is it certain colors just work and others won't? Isn't it pulling it directly from the original photo?


As an example, this morning before work I was working on a photo of my dog (shocking I know [:P]) and I just wanted to paint his brown eyes back in after converting to b&w except for when I did this, his eyes painted back in a lot more orange than brown! I trashed the attempt and left for work but I am hoping to spend more time on it tonight to see if I can get it right.


Any insight provided greatly appreciated!

Denise

Is it mainly CS5 you are refering to? There are a gazillion ways to do it in PS with B&W layers and adding a layer mask to it, or copy/paste in to place. Typically I just go to color range in the menu up top and adjust the fuzziness until it selects at least what I want. Then right click on the image and copy to a new layer, add a mask, and refine if needed. Not sure the best way, but at least one way.

You can always just quick-select the area you want to keep color and hit the inverse-select and change that to black and white. You

Yeah, I know I can do it with layers or quick-select but I was just trying to understand why the difference in color when using another program or when using a plug-in to CS5. Just trying to get an understanding of the behind the scenes of what makes it work or in this case, not work. The brush is so much quicker and I

Did you do any adjustments after you converted to B&W? That affects the whole image. Of course most programs do a little sumthung when converting to B&W to optimize it (bumping up certain colors and contrast) and you could be seeing that. Can

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Originally Posted by andnowimbroke

I wouldn't do it on company time

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[:-*] [:#]

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Originally Posted by andnowimbroke

Did you do any adjustments after you converted to B&W? That affects the whole image. Of course most programs do a little sumthung when converting to B&W to optimize it (bumping up certain colors and contrast) and you could be seeing that.

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Hmmm ...maybe that's it! So any selective color application should probably be done before doing anything else to change tones, contrast, etc. So whatever changes the program applies on it's own when converting to B&W would at least have minimal affect on the original colors!?

Try converting to B&W, then using the art history brush to paint the color back in to the spots you want.

Denise,


I think the best and easiest way to do what you describe is with layers.


1. create a duplicate layer of your image


2. change the duplicate layer to B&W and do whatever you want to it.....the original (background) image will be unchanged


3. on the duplicate image create a reveal all layer mask


4. using the paint brush set to black @ 100% opacity you can now "paint" the eyes back in.(actually you are just concealing part of the mask on the B&W duplicate and letting the eyes in the background image show through)


5. once you are done then flatten the image.


once you do this a few times you can fly through it in a minute or two without even thinking about it.


Joel

Thanks, Joel!


I will do it that way from now on. This morning, I was just messing around with the different features of Topaz B&W that I bought last night and noticed this problem with it and I remember I had that problem with another program I had.

I almost saw the webinar on that Topaz thing. Some of the shots I saw were great but wasn

User error! I played around with the plug-in some more this evening and was able to get the exact colors! I must have had something applied this morning that was affecting it. Teach me to try and post-process at 6 a.m.!

Sounds like you got it sorted Denise. Something else that can happen is that colors can look different when you take them out of their context. The eye can play tricks. A quick check with your color picker will let you know if anything has changed.