It has been done hundreds of thousands of times, yet still has a certain place in the world of post processing. Selective coloring got very big very fast. It was being seen on national ad campaigns as well as first time “photoshopers”. There are certain times that if done correctly selective coloring can really help a photograph stand out. I rarely ever use selective coloring, but the perfect opportunity arose when I was contacted by a client. The client wanted to put as much emphasis on their boat as possible, and although there are numerous ways to achieve that, selective coloring was the clear choice.
The photo above was given to me by the client, and was taken by another photographer. This photo is straight out of camera, and as one can tell has some bright and vivid colors. The first thought that crossed my mind was that the boat would stand out more if the blues of the ocean were toned down a bit.
The first step is always making the basic adjustments. This usually includes a bit of levels and contrast. In the above photo one can see that the whites and black were adjusted as well as the mid tones. This helps in adding some contrast to the overall photo.
The last step of the adjustments was bumping the saturation to give the boat a little more pop. When wanting the adjust the hue/saturation of certain colors within an image there is a better way than just scrolling down through the drop down menu, especially since the color orange doesn’t exist there. Select a color from the drop down menu that is as far from the color you are going to adjust, I selected Cyan. Select the eye dropper tool in the saturation menu, and click over the color you are going to adjust, and it will create a custom profile just for that specific color. Above you can see it created a custom profile “Yellows 2″, and the saturation and hue has been tweaked ever so slightly.
The next step is to create a hue/saturation adjustment layer. There are numerous way to create one, from the menu on top slect Layer—->New Adjustment Layer—->Hue/Saturation. When the menu opens up you can be as creative as you want. Drop the saturation too -100 to achieve completely desaturated, or play with the hue to achieve a slightly toned look. I dragged the saturation down enough to make the ocean dull, yet still retain a slight color (the beauty of adjustment layers is that they can always be readjusted!!!).
Next it is time to “paint” the color back into the orange parts of the boat. Make sure you are selected on the white square on the new adjustment layer, and select the brush tool with the color black set as the foreground color. As seen in the photo above, it is recommended to make an outline of the area you are painting to make sure you are not leaking in to the rest of the photo. Zoom in and use a small brush with a soft edge to ensure perfection. Paying attention to the edges is extremely important, and will help the overall professional look and feel of the image.
Once the edges have been defined, you can easily go in with a bigger brush and paint in the remaining areas. You still want to be careful with this step to ensure that you are not painting in any other color by accident.
This project took approximately 20 minutes to complete from start to finish (not every edit has to take countless hours). The completely finished results can be seen above. Hope you enjoyed the posts.