Selective color in black and white photos

[anonymous]

I have been taking photographs for many years now using medium format camera's. Now that the digital camera is the way forward l am slowly being converted. I have spent many hours playing with Abobe Photoshop and produce some stunning work, but the one effect that l would love to be able to produce is to convert a color photograph into black & white, while also retaining certain portions of the picture in color. Any tips or pointers in the right direction l would be great.

[McQ]

All methods I am aware of require creating two layers in photoshop: one as the desired black and white image (on top) and the other as the original colour photo.

The tricky part is that you then need to create a layer mask between the two so that you can have parts of the color image selectively pass through the mask and become visible. Creating the mask can vary from straightforward to very time consuming, depending on subject matter and separation (a person against an even blue sky would be easier than someone in a green shirt against a field of grass, for example). The magic wand or magnetic lasso tools can get you started with this, but ultimately there is always some degree of more manual work required to create the best mask. For more info look into how to create masks...which will probably also lead you to several 3rd party mask-creating programs such as extensis mask pro and others. These are not necessary and can be costly, but may be of great help if you plan to do this a lot.

I order to achieve a film-like look, take a look at this site's article on converting color photos into black and white. It has techniques on how to mimic the use of contrast-enhancing color filters.