Selective Coloring

The wife and I went on a city walk in Providence Rhode Island today and I was able to capture some shots that made for interesting Photoshop post production experiments.  I used a lot of selective coloring in this series and was most proud of one result in particular.  This manipulation took quite a while to complete but it was worth it - I think that the result makes the photo come alive and makes for some creative interpretation.  The approach I used to create this effect was simple; I converted the image to monochrome and then used to the history brush tool to reinsert the colors where I wanted.  I used extreme magnification to avoid "coloring" too far outside the lines.

The next example is use of selective color to draw attention to the subject of the image. In this case the guy sleeping on the park bench.  Here I used B&W conversion on the image and selected the area around the subject to leave colored with a feathered effect that radiates from the center of the subject.

In this final example, I turned the sliders down on all the colors in Camera RAW except for the blue and aqua and voila!  The sky and reflections in the windows remain colored while everything else is pretty much monochrome - there are a few areas where blue color cast can be seen around the fountain but for the most part this technique works!

Hypocrisy

When the Way is forgotten
Duty and justice appear;
Then knowledge and wisdom are born
Along with hypocrisy.

When harmonious relationships dissolve
Then respect and devotion arise;
When a nation falls to chaos
Then loyalty and patriotism are born.

-LaoTze-