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