Add a Dash of Color to Your B&W Photos

Everything I've learned from computers was either self taught, or from David, who is a computer genius in my eyes. I've spent a lot of time playing with Photoshop and learning different things I can do with it. I use it mostly for making a blemish here or there disappear. I've never taken classes and in all honesty, I'm not very good, I've just learned some good tricks. One of my favorite tricks, is having a black and white picture, with a hint of color like the photo below.


Source

I love how it's black and white and the flowers just pop out of the picture! So, with this in mind, and a project I'm doing for the wedding, I thought I'd share with everyone, how to make this happen!

First you start by selecting the photo you want to work with. I'm using a picture my cousin took of Morgan at a family graduation party. After you have the image you want to work with pulled up, go under Image, then Adjustments and select Desaturate. This will remove all the color from your photo.

The Tool you will be working with is the History Brush Tool.

As for the settings on the brush, it really depends on the size of your photo, how large you zoom in and how accurate you want the color to be. If you try a brush that's too big, you can always undo it and change your brush size as needed.

The next setting for the brush is hardness, just make sure this is at 100%

Next, you take your brush and start "painting" the area you want to have the color show through. Your actually not painting a color, the picture color is showing though because you are removing the black and white from the picture. It's almost like your undoing or erasing the desaturation, but in very small sections!

Once you have the area colored that you want, your done!

The final product comes out really neat! This is one of my favorite pictures of her.

I also went in and played with her eyes so you can see that this can be done in multiple areas. That and she has the pretties blue eyes :)

So, there is a method to my madness here. The final product of this particular picture, will be one of our table numbers! We're taking all of our favorite pictures of Morgan, and making them B&W, and adding a hint of color to it! One of the other picuters I will be using was also from this day. Now, in normal circumstances, I wouldn't have thought of using it, it's Morgan, after she has eaten the BLUEST cake ever made. She's laughing in the picture and her face and tonge are covered in blue icing. This is an inside joke between my Aunt and Uncle and I so that will be the picture at their table. I'll be sure to show the final prduct when I'm done because that one will be a fun one! I will probably make them 5x7 so they're not too big, I just have to figure out what frames I will use. I have also been playing with my Cricut Machine, so we may get the actual numbers from there! Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Do you have any good tricks you can do with the computer that you will be incorporating in your wedding projects?