Alpha Photography Blog

This technique has become pretty common in recent years, but it’s still one of my favourites. The effect can be beautifully subtle, or outlandish - depending on your taste and what you’re trying to achieve.

For those who want to know how to do this in Photoshop, here are 10 steps, as well as images I’ve applied this technique to.

There are other editing programs which would do this, but I learnt using Photoshop, so here is (hopefully) an easy to follow 10-step list for achieving black and white photos that also have some color:

Most importantly - you need to have taken the photo in color.

1. Open up the image you want to edit

2. Make a copy of the image before you begin editing (saving it as a TIFF file)

3. Go to ‘Layer’ - ‘Duplicate Layer’, then click ‘OK’. You should now have, in your Layers Palette (bottom right-hand corner), 2 layers - one called Background, and the other called Background copy

4. Making sure you’re ‘Backround copy’ is highlighted (if you’re not sure, just click on the area around the words ‘Background copy’), convert your color image into black and white (for details, click here)

5. Select the History Brush tool

6. Adjust the opacity on the top toolbar (I often start with 70% and work my way up)

7. You can change the size of your brush, by using the [ and ] keys on your keyboard

8. Now begin ‘painting’ (by clicking, holding, and dragging your mouse) over the area you want to bring to life with color!

9. Once you’re finished and happy with the result, you’ll need to”flatten” the image, by going to ‘Layer’ - ‘Flatten Image’

10. Now you can save the file as a JPEG and enjoy the end result.
Here are a few other examples of what this technique looks like:

Now the same technique, but with a little ‘diffused glow’ added to give the image some more mood, and surreal look:

It can be a little fiddly, but it’s great fun and the effects can be pretty unique - in only 10 steps!

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