Photoshop Tutorial: Partial Color With Layer Masks

I’m going to show you how to make a black & white image with selective color, using a very powerful tool in Photoshop called Layer Masks, and painting on these layer masks using the Brush Tool. We’re also going to make the color really pop, and we could even change the color entirely.

To start, I find it a lot easier to use an image which lends itself well to the effect. I look for one bright, solid color, fairly isolated from other bright colors. For this reason, I chose this image of my bartender friend pouring a reddish mixed drink into a pint glass.

Go ahead and load up your color image. Make it black and white using the black & white adjustment layer (or a channel mixer layer, either one works – just as long as it is an adjustment layer.) Notice that just to the left of the description of the layer (i.e. “Black & White 1″) there is a little white square. This is the representation of the layer’s mask, or which part of the image is going to be visible.

Think of it as masking windows off before you paint a wall – the paint hits some parts, and doesn’t hit others. In our Photoshop layer mask, white means you can see it, black means you can’t see it, and shades of grey are acceptable as well (meaning you can fade things from visible to invisible without a harsh line.) The Layer Mask is pure white by default, meaning the whole layer is visible, or in this case that the whole image below (our color image) is affected by the adjustment layer. We’re going to change this!

1. Press B to select the Brush Tool. In the brush options (at the top of the screen in Photoshop) make sure that your brush hardness is between 50 and 70% (see screenshot.)  Adjust the brush size so that when you hold your mouse cursor over the image, the circle which appears fits inside the part of the image which you want to color in, but don’t make it too small – you have to paint with this brush!) Make the Opacity of the brush 100%, but make the Flow only 10% (also in the screenshot.)

2. Make sure you have the adjustment layer’s mask selected, by clicking on the little white square on that layer. Also make sure that black is your foreground color. When you have selected the layer mask, your colors in the toolbar will automatically become black and white. The color on top is your foreground color, the one behind is the background color. We’re only concerned with foreground color at the moment, because that’s the one that the Brush Tool uses. If white is in the foreground and black in the back, either press X on the keyboard or click the little arrows next to the colors. This switches them around.

3. Paint on the image. Think of it as a spraypaint can that’s coming out really slow, and give the area you want in color a bunch of coats. If you have correctly selected the layer mask and have black as your foreground color, you will see the color slowly start to show up. Continue painting the color in until you are satisfied with the effect. Fine edges sometimes require a smaller brush, and zooming in can make this easier; use the Navigator Window for that. Also, you can adjust your brush size while you are working by using the [ and ] keys on your keyboard. If you can’t see the brush circle, make sure Caps Lock is off, as this can hide it. The next thing we’re going to do is make sure the color really pops.

4. Make a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer. You want to push up the saturation until you like the look, and you may want to adjust the hue either a little or a lot. I decided just to make the drink look a little more red than orange, but I could have make it blue or green as well using the Hue slider. Then adjust the brightness – I adjusted mine down a little to compensate for the boost in saturation. This can actually be really fun in a pop-art sort of way though. The last thing we have to do is duplicate the layer mask from the black & white layer.

5. Hold Ctrl + Alt and drag the layer mask icon from the Black & White adjustment layer to the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer’s mask icon. The Hue/Saturation adjustment layer’s mask will, by default, be pure white, but this will replace it with the mask you painted in step 3. There’s only one problem: we need this mask the other way around – we want the drink to be painted in white on this layer instead of in black, because we only want that part of the layer mask to show up. So click on the Hue/Saturation layer mask and press I + Ctrl to invert it. We’re done – just the drink is in color and it’s bright red, and we accomplished it using layer masks. Good job!