Photoshop Elements: How to Keep The Color Of an Object In a Black and White Photo by Pulling Out One Color

There are so many amazing things you can do in Photo Shop. Have you ever seen those gorgeous pictures of the kids holding a rose? The kids are all in black and white and the only color you see is a red rose. Well, here is a simple way to do that using Photo Shop Elements. In this step-by-step instructional guide, to the right of each instruction, you will see a picture of what you want to be looking for while doing your project, such as the buttons to press and so on. It is literally taken from the screen as I did each step.

If you enjoy this, check out some of my other Photoshop and camera tips!!

For other great Photo shop Elements and SLR Camera Tips:

• Photo Shop Elements Fun! Deleting Unwanted Items
• Get Your Camera out of Auto and into Manual Mode

Step One: Click on the smart tool:

You will see this tool to the right. It is the one with the darkened area around it. If you are uncertain you are clicking on the correct icon, hover above it for a few seconds and you will see a bar coming that will tell you what the icon is for. If it says "smart tool." Click on it. Once you do this, you will see a new drop down menu on the top of the screen.

Step Two: Scroll down and click on "black and white in reverse."

The drop down menu will be right above your work area and below the main menus. Click on the arrow clicking down and you will find "black and white in reverse." Assuming you have the same version as me, it should be one of them that looks like a flower.

Step Three: Highlight the area that you want to be colored.

When you first press black and white in reverse, you may feel like nothing happened. So take your cursor and click on an area that you want to remained color. The moment you release on your mouse, you will see all except the highlighted area has turned black and white. You will want to keep putting the mouse over the area, until all of it is highlighted. There will be a lot of tweaking which will be explained in the next step.

Step Four: Tweak the area until it is perfect.

Next to the drop down menu, you will see three important buttons. The first two you will see are a brush with a (+) next to it and one with a (-) on it. These are very essential to tweaking. Click on the plus area when you want to continue to add color to the picture. If you have gotten areas that you don't want to be colored, then use the minus button, and spread over those areas.

Step Five: Continue to tweak.

The tweaking will be the most tedious part. But one thing that will help you is to adjust the diameter of the brush. You will find this button next to the plus and minus brushes. You will probably want to start out with a larger brush, (I use twenty to start with). Then when you begin tweaking, use smaller (I usually use between 1 and 7 for tweaking). This will be a long game of going between the plus and minus, adjusting the brush size until it's perfect and to your liking.

Step Six: Flatten the Image.

This may not make sense unless you are familiar with Photoshop. When you start editing, the program will automatically make another layer to your picture. This means that everything you will do will be on it's own separate layer. The background, which is the image you started with will be always be there, until you flatten. They do this, so that way if you do a lot of work, and you want to scratch it. Or if you have several layers going, and you realize you want to scratch a previous thing without scratching what you just did, then you can delete that layer. I hope that doesn't confuse you. Once you become familiar with Photoshop this will make more sense.

The important thing to note before flattening a layer is that once it has been done, you can not change it. If you want to undo anything you already did, you will have to get your original and start from scratch. So before you flatten the image you need to make sure you are pleased with it.

Once you have decided you are pleased with it, you will want to click on the top layer. A menu will appear. It should look like the one to the right. The darkened area is the layer that I had clicked on to make my project. It should help you locate it on your screen. On the menu "flatten image" will be the very bottom item on the pop-up menu. Click on it, and you are done!

Step Seven: Save! And Enjoy!!

Once you save your final project, you can sit back and enjoy y0ur beautiful masterpiece. Show it off to all of you friends. It's a fun project with cute results! If you have no one to show it off, feel free to send it to me, or post it on as a comment if your able to. I'd love to see other people's successful works! Now look below at mine!