selective colour

Don't you just love the selective colour effect? I think it's a really great effect and can looks just gorgeous on certain photos (unless you don't overuse it). I also think it always looks so impressive and extremely professional, and I've never quite dared to try to find out how to do it. The only selective colour conversion I've used so far is the very simple desaturating all colours except the one you want to keep with a hue/saturation levels adjustment. Which obviously is very limited, as it only works if the colour in question doesn't appear anywhere else in the picture, which is rarely the case.

A Flickr friend of mine is using this effect very impressively and inspiringly, and has kindly shared with me the how to. I also found this easy to follow, step-by-step video tutorial (I just love video tutorials!!) and finally found the "courage" to give it a try myself. The trick is a simple layer mask. Which Photoshop Elements 8 unfortunately doesn't have, but it's actually very easy to "borrow" one. It's explained in the video as well. And then, it's just brush work :).

Vienna, Staatsoper, May 2011

This is just a quick try, but I'm quite pleased with the result. I was waiting for quite some time, hoping for this bright tourist sightseeing bus to drive away and allowing me a full view of the Staatsoper. But it just wouldn't move, and so it now became a feature :). You can of course experiment much more with the background, to turn it into a great black & white background, and maybe even add textures. In the video tutorial, the black & white conversion is done with using one of the presets, which is something, I somehow, don't know why, just don't really like using. But for a first try, I think it's quite okay :). I'll certainly be doing more of this now!