Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 7/24/2010

Question
Hi there,
What I would like to know how to achive is:
I have a photo of myself riding motocross with other riders around me. I would like to retain the colour of myself and my bike but turn everything else greyscale/black and white.

I have a good knowledge of Coreldraw and Illustrator and average knowledge with photoshop so I should be able to follow any instructions!

Kind regards
Lee

Answer
Hi Lee,

This can be very simple depending on how new your version of Photoshop is.

First, select yourself (or whatever you wish to keep in color). Next, if you have a version of PS from CS3+ go to Select>inverse to reverse the selection. If you have something earlier than CS3, then skip this next step.

With CS3+, go to the layers menu and click on the icon at the bottom with the black and white ball. Choose hue/saturation to activate an adjustment layer. Then drop the saturation to -100. The selected area will be gray leaving you in color.

If you have earlier than CS3, keep you selected and use Cmd+J (mac)/Ctrl+J (PC) to duplicate the color image onto its own layer. Then in the layers panel, reselect the background layer and go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation and change the saturation to -100.

Thanks

Kevin