Dash of colour in B&W photos

[che6mw]

All,

been on here lurking for ages now. Have a fair few shots I'd like comments on. Here is a starter. Love this shot I took on one of the rare occasions my little boy stayed still long enough for me to take a snap. I've done a whole series of shots mixing B&W with colour - I like the effect. Just can't work out whether I like him in B&W on this or whether it implies he's dead, heaven forbid.

Anyway, C&C welcome.

[mneame]

lovely shot imo, very peaceful. i like to have selective colouring in b&w shots.

Edited by mneame on Saturday 25th November 12:06

[poah]

the only problem I have with the pic is the large amount of shadow on the other side of the baby's face other wise I quite like it.

[pupp]

That's a great image...assume it's an effect achieved by layers and desaturating?

[beano500]

There's several routes, but the "quick" way is to do the desaturation as a layer, mask that and just attack the layer with an appropriate brush to let the colour back through.

Working with layers and being more accurate by drawing a path to use as a mask is neater.

[che6mw]

pupp said:

That's a great image...assume it's an effect achieved by layers and desaturating?

Thanks for feedback. It was originally a colour photo. I copied it to a seperate layer, as you suggest. But I then made that layer greyscale. I then simply deleted the bits I wanted so the colour on the layer below shows through. Took about 30 seconds!

[che6mw]

poah said:

the only problem I have with the pic is the large amount of shadow on the other side of the baby's face other wise I quite like it.

Cheers. I quite like dark shadow in photos so I'd actually adjusted the bightness and contrast of the original shop to 'highten' this shadow. Might have a play with the original shot though and see how it looks without darkening his face so much.

[djm101]

This is an effect known as selective colouring. I think it can be quite nice in certain settings, butit's my sad duty to repeort that amongst photographers it is considered a bit naff, or at least dated.

I think it had a bit of a hay-day when photoshop et-al made it's way into the home environment after having been strictly professional.

I think the pic is great as a personal photo, but it doesn't do much for the unconnected observer.