Selective Color

Photoshop Tutorial – Selective Color

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to edit an image with the Selective Color technique. The image I’ll be using for this tutorial was taken with Sony’s DSC-W7 at Clarence Fahnestock State Park in New York. Ive placed an link where you can download the image i edited so you can follow along. Below is the end result of the tutorial.

Files

Here is the image unedited if you want to follow along with the tutorial.
Green Leafs

Step 1
Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer by right clicking on background and going to duplicate.

Step 2
Right click on background copy and go to blending options then color overlay. For blend mode choose Hue. I left it at red because thats the color i choose for my top leaf.

Step 2 A:

Step 2 B:

Step 3
Next choose the eraser tool on the left using 1 of the soft mechanical brushes start erasing any thing thats not going to be red. Since i want just my top leaf red I’m going to erase every thing but that. You should have an image like the one below so far.

Step 3 A:

Step 3 B:

Step 4
You should now have 1 leaf red and the rest green. Now to make the blue leaf duplicate the Background layer again, and do the same thing as you did for the red leaf. Right Click – Blending Options – Color Over Lay – Blended Mode (Hue), then choose the color blue. Choose the eraser tool and erase every thing thats not going to be blue. Your image should look like the one below at this point.

Step 5
Duplicate your background layer again. Go to Blending Options and choose color overlay. Pick the color black and choose hue for blending mode. Your image should now look like this now.

Step 6
Go to create new fill or adjustment layer on the right and choose curves set it to roughly where i have it and click ok. Then for blending mode choose overlay and set opacity at 75%.

Step 6 A:	Step 6 B:
Step 6 C:

Last step is to add the black bottom and top borders, simply choose rectangle tool on left. That about covers it you should have pretty much the same image as mine. There are other ways to do this type of effect, but this way works quickly and easily for me. If you created an image of your own based off of this tutorial please send it to me and i might place it on this page.

Files
Here is the image unedited if you want to follow along with the tutorial.
Green Leafs

*** If you place this tutorial on your website please post a link back to my site ***