Content

• Method 2 of 2: Painting the mask
• Tips

1 Open the image you want to work with. Make a backup copy, just in case. From the File menu, choose "Save As ...", give it a name such as MyFile_Colorized or whatever name comes to your mind, and save it to any folder. By default, the original folder will be offered, so it is important to rename the file.

2 Select the area you want to keep full color. Using the selection tool, or any combination of selection tools, select the area you want to highlight with color.

• Rectangle selection is also interesting, but you can use more complex selection shapes.
• Select the entire area you want to keep in color using the Lasso or Straight Lasso tools.
• Use the "Add To" and "Remove From" options in the Selection menu to cut out the part you do not want to leave in color.
• Adding a couple of pixels to the selection with the Feather tool will help the colored area blend more naturally with the desaturated area.
• In this example we are going to make a rectangular selection around the eyes.

3 Invert the selection. From the "Select" menu, choose "Inverse".

• This will invert the selection by selecting the entire image except the eyes.

4 Create a new adjustment layer. At the bottom in the Layers window, click on the black and white circle icon and select Hue / Saturation (Hue / Saturation).

• This will create a new adjustment layer. Hue / Saturation (Hue / Saturation).

5 Go for it! In the Hue / Saturation docker, move the Saturation indicator all the way to the left. As you move it, notice that the whole picture, except for the eyes, turns black and white as you move the indicator to the left. If you look at the layers window, you will see that on the adjustment layer Hue / Saturation (Hue / Saturation) has a white mask layer with a small black rectangle in it. These are your eyes, and they are masked (protected) from hue and saturation adjustments.

6 The picture is ready! Save it and post it to Flickr, Facebook or your website.

Method 2 of 2: Painting the mask

1. 1 Open the image you want to work with. As with the first method, make a backup copy. Follow the same steps above and start from scratch.
2. 2 Create a new adjustment layer. As before, create a new layer with the Hue / Saturation tool, only this time do it before selecting any area. You will notice that the picture remains in full color and the Hue / Saturation mask is white.
   • Decrease color saturation. Drag the "Saturation" indicator all the way to the left to make the picture black and white.
   • Since there were no masked areas on the picture when applying "Hue / Saturation", everything turned out to be black and white. To give color to the picture, we will draw a mask. For this example, we will only paint over the lips.
3. 3 Select the "Zoom" tool. It's located at the top of the tool palette on the left.
   • In the Zoom tool, select the area you want to enlarge. This is necessary for better control of the brush.
4. 4 Select the Brush tool. You can do this by clicking on the Brush icon or by pressing the "B" key on your keyboard. To bring back the original color to the lips, we will paint over the mask with a brush.
   • When we masked the eyes in the first method, the mask was solid black. Since the colors in the photo are bright and vivid, the lips will look like a clown in black and white, so we will use a different method.
5. 5 Click on the foreground color and set it to 50% gray:
6. 6 Paint over the mask. Use a brush large enough to complete the task faster, but small enough not to paint over an area that is too large. In our case, a small overshoot is not terrible.We can easily undo the action and do everything as it was.
   • An alternative method to select the desired area is to use the Magic Wand tool (press the W key on your keyboard) and hold down the Shift key until the entire object is selected.
   • Once the object is selected, make sure the "Hue / Saturation" layer is active and press Alt + Delete to fill the selection with the original color.
7. 7 Correct the sloppy areas of the contour. Now that you've roughly painted over the lips, we need to clean up the edges and add beauty.
   • Swap the foreground and background colors so that white is on top. You can do this by clicking on the double-headed arrow or by pressing X on your keyboard.
   • Carefully paint over the edges of the colored area to remove imperfections and complete your picture.
8. 8 Finish the drawing and save the file. Save your picture for uploading to the network for posterity or just on disk if you have nowhere to put free space. Your picture is ready!

Tips

• Ctrl-Z will undo the last action
• Use Shift + Selection Tool to add new areas for your selection and Alt + Selection Tool to remove areas you have selected by mistake.
• When selecting a color (or object) with the Magic Wand, you can start at Tolerance 30 and then switch to 10 as you get closer to selecting the entire object.
• You may also need other selection tools to make the process easier by selecting multiple groups of pixels.