Selective Recoloring
Monday, March 9, 2009 at 7:07PM 
Hello all. This post is about something I really really like and that is the selective recoloring of an image. This first photo was taken of a friend of mine named Leigha. The shot is thoroughly explained in my last blog post. I decided to do some creative editing to the photo. I imported the photo into Photoshop CS4 and copied the background layer then created a B&W Conversion layer. This method gives you a ton of freedom for tweaking the photo to exactly how you want it to look in a nondestructive way. It also creates a mask for the layer. Once I had the picture looking exactly like I wanted I proceed to paint on the layer mask with black to hide the effect of the B&W conversion exposing the color of her jeans below. I then added a layer above the photo layer and filled it with grey then under the filer menu I rendered a radial lighting effect then changed the layers blend mode to overlay to get that great spotlight on her face and upper body.
This next photo was taken of a one of Leigha’s friends named Kim. This
was her first shoot and it took a little while for her to get comfortable with the camera but once she did she really came thru. This was shot with the Canon 1.8 50mm lens with a 580ex flash remotely fired off to camera left with a Honl Speed Snoot attached to it used as a reflector. I will be posting a review of the Honl flash modifiers soon.
Anyway, she was wearing the coolest looking pair of jeans I’ve seen in a while. I told her I really wanted to get a shot of the graffiti on the jeans so she jumped in this doorway and struck this pose. I just loved it. I knew when looking at the LCD screen on the camera that I was going to turn it into a B&W and do the Selective Recoloring technique to the jeans to really show them off. I used the same technique as the above picture without the spotlight layer.
I hope you all enjoy these pictures just as much as I enjoyed shooting and tweaking them. Again thanks to Leigha and Kim for their patience and willingness to pose for the “Snoot” all day.
Peace
Reader Comments (4)
Kimmy looks great!! That is an amazing photo of her, I love what you did with it!!
Both pictures look awesome- i'm noticing a theme- blue jeans with a black top! I love the attitude of the girls, i'd say both pictures lend themselves well to the selective recoloring effect. Great stuff Eric, and the girls!
Great shots! I really like what you did to the second shot, color of the jeans fading to black and white is the perfect touch.
Looks like Kim will make a fine model . . . :)