Editing Photos (Simplified)

On a personal note, I'd like to thank Nicole Pfeiffer for teaching me that I was editing my photographs the hard way, indeed! I've simplified this editing process so that you can create beautiful black and white photos with a splash of colour that much faster.

Back to business...

As an artist, I tend to be a perfectionist. This, of course is one of my worst habits. Usually, artists thrive on the imperfect because it is what makes their art different from another, but to me that is only something non-artists think. (And possibly just me.) We make our imperfections on purpose, and in essence... perfectly imperfect!

That being said, I took a photography course in college, and I failed. I failed miserably! I hated photography after taking that course, but that didn't last long. I realized I had a pretty cool camera from the course and knew the basics of how to use it. Just an FYI, if you are looking to take a course in photography and know nothing about how to use a manual camera, do not take biomedical photography, this will detour you from your passion to take moments in life and freeze them in a photo. Take photography 101 so you can learn the in's and out's of your camera and learn to enjoy the art of photography.

The one thing that course taught me that I'm beyond thankful for was Adobe Photoshop. I have long been a fan of Adobe Photoshop. It has been a tool I use for making my pictures brighter, darker, black & white, taking out an unnecessary car from my otherwise immaculate landscape, etc. Photoshop has also served as a comic relief tool for me by creating extreme one of a kind shots of friends and family members. We called those photos sharpie art. But my favourite has been taking a colour photo and making it black and white, while leaving some of the photo in colour.

My sister and my nephews are in the photo below and I did several things with this photograph, but most notably I changed the colour mode to black and white, while leaving their shirts in colour. (I also took out a neighbor's playhouse and boat, if you look close enough, you'll notice a little bit of my editing. This was a difficult picture to work with.)

I've been asked by friends, family, fellow Etsy-ians and strangers how I make these beautiful photographs in Photoshop. And my answer to me, is simple. Now of course, I have no idea if I'm doing my editing the "correct" way, but what I'm about to show you works for me. And, with practice, I hope it works for you too!

Keep in mind that I am using Adobe Photoshop 7, so your program may be different than mine. In regards to Photoshop, most of the programs have similar layer features, colour mode, and cropping tools. As well as editing commands using the Ctrl key.

1. First you need to select the photograph you'd like to use for this picture. It works best with a photo that has a bold or bright colour that you're going to highlight. Here is the photo I used:

There are two main things to keep in mind when you want to take a colour photo and make it black and white with a splash of colour, the first being: Crop your photo to desired size PRIOR to any of the steps below. This saves you from figuring out exact crop points later on. The second is choosing what pieces you want to keep in colour. After you do both of those things, proceed to the next step.

2. The very first thing you're going to do is select your Lasso Tool, also known as the cropping tool. You are going to want to select the Polygonal Lasso Tool. As this allows you to crop by clicking around an object instead of having to freehand crop, which is much more difficult. You change which Lasso Tool you are using by right clicking the mouse to get the drop down menu. For practice, click around on the photo until you're comfortable with how the polygonal lasso tool works.

3. Once you have this tool selected, I want you to highlight the object you want to KEEP in colour. After you have selected this object, I want you to copy it. You can do this by holding Ctrl C or by going to Edit > Copy.

4. The next thing you are going to do is convert the colour mode to grayscale. You do this by clicking  Image > Mode > Grayscale.

 

5. After you have changed the photo into grayscale mode, you are going to go back and change it into RGB mode. This will keep the photo in a grayscale colour while being in a RGB colour mode, thus allowing you to paste your coloured object, which you already copied, back onto the grayscale photo but in colour. You change the colour mode just the same as you did when you changed it to grayscale, but this time select RGB mode.

 

6. After you change the colour mode back to RGB colour, you can paste your copied colour object into the grayscale photograph. You do this by holding Ctrl V, or Edit > Paste. Then select the Move Tool and move your copied colour object until it is directly over the area it lays in the grayscale photo. After you have positioned your colour object to its original spot, click Ctrl E, this Merges the layers together so that when you save the photo as a JPEG, it will save all of your hard work. You can also merge by clicking Layer > Merge Layers.

7. Lastly, ENJOY your beautifully edited photo!!

I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial of Photoshop. With many trials, you will learn your errors and better, faster ways of doing things. I did just that with this latest blog and I'm able to share it with you. Thanks again, Nicole.

Happy Photoshoping!

Love,

Katie.

"Love will immediately enter into any mind that truly wants it." -A Course In Miracles.