Story Behind the Blog:

I’ve always had people ask me, how do you make the one color black and white photos?

Well, here it is! I’ve created the Tutorial with the assumption that knowledge of Photoshop is greater than beginner.

This is one of my favourite processes for editing and enhancing digital photographs enjoy!

Begin:

Choose a photograph that would suit this technique, something predominate in the photo, Ie: a flower.
Open the selected photo in Photoshop, I’m using version CS3 Extended.

Once open, double click on the background layer in the layers panel, which automatically changes the locked background into layer0.

I’m labelling layer0, as ‘Base Layer’, duplicate this layer by dragging the layer icon over the ‘new’ layer button at the bottom of the layers panel.

This will automatically create a ‘duplicate’ layer of ‘Base Layer’. Name the duplicated layer ‘Desaturate Layer’.

So, now we have two identical layers, one named ‘Base Layer’ and the other ‘Desaturate Layer’.

Select the ‘Desaturate Layer’, and choose Image > Adjustments > Desaturate from the top menu, or Shift+Ctrl+U (on windows).

Select the ‘Desaturate Layer’ and from the tools panel select the eraser tool.

Set the eraser tool with an opacity of 10%, and a soft round brush, whatever size you feel comfortable using.

Erase the part that you want the color to show through, I do mine in layers so I can make the edging soft and flow nicely from the b/w to color.

Voila!

For the picture I chose, I’m also going to delete some of the flower so the purple shows through.

Happy photo editing!