Creative Effects Challenge No.48 - B&W with a Touch of Color

[Tom]

Thanks for joining the Creative Effects team @fotofrank, and for the great challenge you gave us!

There has been some interesting discussion and images recently about black & white photography and the value of removing the distraction that color sometimes causes.  That reminded me of a technique that I especially like: keeping only the subject in color and de-emphasizing the rest by rendering it in black & white.

Here is one tutorial on changing an image to B&W with a Touch of Color.  There are some obvious improvements that can be made, but this one has the advantage of being particularly easy; just 2 steps!  Here is my example of this technique:

Original	B&W with a Touch of Color

I can't wait to see how you use it!

[Tom]

A few of you have given the black & white component a color tone: sepia, night view, etc.  Great idea!

I had a similar thought; use the complementary color of the subject to provide dramatic contrast.  The complementary color is easy to determine because the Red, Green and Blue intensities of a color and its complement each add up to 255.  For example, the RGB values of the orange of my flower are about (250, 90, 15), so the complementary color has RGB values of (5, 165, 240).

Here is how to use the complementary color to tint the B&W layer:

• Using the Color Picker Tool, click on the dominant color of your subject; this will set the foreground color.
• Click on the foreground color tile and the color picker dialog will be displayed.
• There are 6 radio buttons labeled HSB RGB; note the decimal value in the RGB boxes, but do not close this dialog.
• Into each of the RGB boxes enter the value which 255-PreviousValue, then click OK.
• Now select the Brush Tool and then the Color Replacement Tool.
• Use this brush on the B&W layer to colorize it using this new tint.
  

B&W with a splash of color	Complementary color tint