2 Rookie Effects Questions

I have been using Photoshop for about a week now and it is greek to me. I have two questions about editing. How do I:

1. Take a photograph and remove all the color from the outside of the picture. I see this all the time where the color photo is oval-shaped in the middle and everything outside the photo is white but the edges around the oval are blended/faded into the white.

2. Add color to a black and white photo. If somone in the picture is holding a rose, how do i color the rose only but leave the rest of the photo black and white/grayscale?

cpatt1124 said:

I have been using Photoshop for about a week now and it is greek to me.

then change the language setting to english. thatll solve all of your problems.

Hi cpatt1124,

Solution for number 1 is

1. Use elliptical Marquee tool and make a selection in the oval shape you want.
2. As you want to fade out the sides, you have to go to select-> Inverse.
3. That soften effect is called "Feather" so go to Select->Feather (Ctrl+Alt+D)
4. It will ask you how many pixels you'd like to use, this is trial and error, and also depends on the pixeldimensions of your photo. Try "5" or "20". Click OK
5. Then Press delete on your keyboard. You can press it more than once to increase the amount of the feather.


For number two - the easiers way is if you infact have a colour photo, and make everything but the rose black and white. But if you have a black and white image, and want to colorize something you do the following :

1. Make sure you are in RGB mode

2. Make a selection with feathered edges

3. Go to Image->Adjustments->Hue/Saturation.

4. Tick the Colourize tick-mark in the right bottom corner. Move the hue slider and the saturation one to the colour you want.

Enjoy!!

cpatt1124,

for question number two, I've posted a little step by step tutorial a while back. You'll find it here: http://forum.teamphotoshop.com/showthread.php?t=26289

You create a vignette like this:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pselements/ht/ndvignette.htm

Thank you guys for making it so idiot proof. This info really helped a lot. Is there a quicker way for number 2 if Im starting out with a color photo?

cpatt1124 said:

Thank you guys for making it so idiot proof. This info really helped a lot. Is there a quicker way for number 2 if Im starting out with a color photo?

None that I am aware of to make it quicker. There are a lot of selection tools, such as extract, which would allow you to remove the background and only work on the flower. You would of course want to make a copy of the background layer first. When done, you would the have your extracted flower on top of the background layer. There are many selection tools such as magicwand, lasso, pen tool, etc. Each selection tool has advantages and disadvantages for each type of selection you need to make. Remember, all selection tools you can add to the selection by holding down the shift key while using the selection tool. By the way the Alt key removes a portion of the selection.

But for your question, honestly the few steps above to colorize it is a very quick way to colorize a photo.

There are many sites out there such as teamphotoshop that can help. Just do a search for photoshop tutorials or photoshop contest sites and you will find tons of support in this community.

Like Radical Rom Said, you'll have to use some kind of selection tool to select the rose, and make a new layer (Ctrl+J on the PC). Then go the the background layer and desaturate it Image -> Adjustment -> Desaturate (Shift+Ctrl+U) and then you'll have it!!

Good luck my friend!!

Easiest way, which is destructive to the image, is to desaturate the image and paint over the rose with the history brush.