An editing lesson

(Janet, this one's for you.)

Layers are pretty much the bread and butter of photo editing. If you want to do much of anything in photoshop, you've gotta understand layers. And there is A LOT that you can do with layers. I'm still learning it myself. So, since you were wondering what you can do with layers, I thought that I would show you. I'm going to start with something super simple. And I'm going to tell you the easiest way to do it (because the more I learn about photoshop, the more I realize that there are like 30 ways to do everything).

Selective coloring. (Black and white pic with a splash of color) Yeah, it's a bit overdone, but it can still be pretty and is a good way for you to actually SEE how two different layers interact. So that's what I'm going to tell you how to do. I'm doing this in Elements 6, but if you have the big guns (CS), it's the same concept.

Step One: Pick the image you want to play with and open it in photoshop (elements).

Step Two: Go to your layers bin. It is over on the right side, toward the bottom. Click on that little black and white circle. (This allows you to add an adjustment layer. Basically, this creates layers that do some of the most common edits.) You will be choosing Hue/Saturation.

Step 3: To turn your picture black and white, you have to desaturate the picture. You do this by moving the little slider under saturation (it's the one in the middle) to the left. If you want it totally black and white, go all the way to the left. Then click okay. (Don't worry about hue or lightness.) Your picture should be black and white.

Now we're going to bring the color back. (I swear I'm not singing that to the tune of Sexy Back...) Here's where you get to enjoy the magic of layers. That adjustment layer you created put a "mask" over your picture. It's like dressing up for Halloween. Your picture is still the same picture, it's just hiding under a hockey mask, so it looks a little different. What we're going to do to get the color back is erase a part of the black and white layer, so we can see the color underneath. (Imagine you had two copies of my pumpkin picture--one color, one black and white. If you lay the black and white picture directly on top of the color one, you can't see the color one at all. But, if you cut the pumpkin out of the black and white one, and lay it back on top of the color one, the pumpkin is in color. That's EXACTLY what we are doing... just digitally!)

Step 4: (all of these things are labeled on the pic below)
a. Select the eraser tool.
b. Pick the brush you want to use from the "brush type" drop down menu. (You'll probably want to use one that has soft edges. They are more forgiving. As you bring your mouse over the brushes, you'll see a name come up if you pause for a second. Just go with one that says "soft round....:)
c. Then pick a size that will work for what you are trying to colorize. If you aren't sure what size you need, just move your mouse off of the slider and a little circle will appear - that's the size of your brush. If you need it bigger, move the slider to the right, smaller, move to the left.
d. The last thing you need to set before you bring your color back is the opacity of your brush. This basically decides how much of the color you want to see. If you want to see the full color, then set your opacity to 100%. (That usually looks funny, though, if I'm being totally honest.) If you want it desaturated some (more faded so it blends better with the black and white), then pick a lower opacity.

Step 5: Color over the part of the picture you want to bring back to color. I did this one at 100% just so you can clearly see where I was using the eraser tool.

Viola! An orange pumpkin and desaturated background. Selective color. You did it. You cut (erased) a hole in the top layer and you can see the orange pumpkin from the bottom picture.

The only other thing you need to know is that you will want to save your picture as a JPEG if you want to open it anywhere else. (Click FILE, SAVE AS, then choose JPEG from the drop down menu.) Oh, and I always do all of my work on a duplicate layer so that my actual image is hiding safe and sound underneath it all. But you don't have to. It's just something I do to be on the safe side.

I hope that made sense to you and you were able to follow it to do the same. Keep your eyes peeled. I'll probably do a tutorial on how layer masks work and how you can do [a lot] more with them. :)