Selective Coloring

The idea of selective coloring or partial color has always facinated people. Which is why, I am going to teach you how to make your images partially colored in 3 different ways!

Open you images. For this example I am using an image from neopets, I recommend that you use the same image I am using and follow along.

Technique #1: Smart Brushes

This is probably the easiest and fastest technique, unfortunately it can only be used for Photoshop Elements 7 which supports the smart brush, if you have an older version go on to technique #2.
1) Select your "Smart Brush Tool" (F).
2) Under Presets go to "reverse effects" and choose "reverse - black and white".
3) Simply paint on the area that you want colored. You can make the brush size smaller to paint the edges.
4) In certain cases the regular smart brush may have gotten into a place that you do not want colored. Simply press the "F" key again and you can access the Detail Smart Brush.
5) Click the "subtact from selection" and paint over the part you want to make grayscale again. You may want to zoom in.
6) Go to Select - Deselect. And then Layer - Merge Visible.

Technique #2: Using Selections


Definitely the 2nd easiest way, plus it gives you more control.
1) Go to the "quick edit". On the left side you will be a couple of tools. Select the "quick selection tool" (A).
2) Select the part that you want colored, or the part you want to remain black and white, whichever is easier. Also you may want to zoom in a bit to have a better view of your work.
3) Adjust the brush size to you convenience and use the "subtract from selection" tool if you select too much.
4) Go back to "full edit". At this stage you can either modify the selection or continue.
I went to Select - Modify - Smooth and set it at 2 pixels.
5) In in step #2 you selected the part that you wanted to remain colored go to Select - Inverse.
Now you have 2 options of how you want to proceed:
6a) Go to Enhance - Convert to Black and White. Select the type and shade you want.
6b) Go to Enhance - Adjust Color - Adjust Hue and Saturation.

Check "Colorize". The hue will change the color, saturation will change the intensity of the color and lightness will change how light or dark the color is. The best way to figure out what suits your picture best is to experiment with the sliders.
7) You are done! See mine below.

Compare 2 or More Images (Grids)

Often when making tutorials you want to compare the before and after image. With Photoshop Elements, you can do this quite easily, and get professional results.

1) Open up your before and after images.
2) Now its resizing time! My original image size is 1280px by 960px. Go to Image - Resize - Image Size. For this tutorial I am going to resize both images down to 20%.
3) Now comes the tricky part. Select your "before" image and go to Image - Resize - Canvas Size. You are going to have to play around with this.

So, my image size is 256px by 192px. Now, for the canvas, I am going to round the width of my image up to 300px, so 300px an image for 2 images. Lets make the width of the canvas size 600px. Now for the height, 192px can be rounded up to 200px, and I am going to add an extra 50px for text and such. Which makes my new canvas size 600px by 250px.
4)  Ok, now a fairly simple part. Hold down "ctrl" on your keyboard and click on your layer thumbnail in your layers palette, which I have outlined in bluw below.

5) Go to Edit - Copy, and then go back to your "before" image, which should now have a large canvas go to Edit - Paste.
6) Now go to View - Grid. Now go to Edit - Preferences - Grid. For this particular picture I have changed gridline to ever 1 pixel(s).
7) Select your "Move Tool" (V). Move both your images to a good spot. I am keeping both images 3 squares from the end and about 2 squares from the bottom.

8) Now use your "horizontal type tool" (T) and using a color that complements the image (#ff6600), write "before" and "after" above your images.
9) What I did, is I went to Edit - Preferences - Grid again, and changed it back to inches. For me, the text now just clicked into place.You may have to experiment a bit till the text actually just 'clicks', however when you look at the image you can tell that the text is more or less centered.
10) I added a drop shadow to both my images, and below is how they turned out.

Remember, its going to take a while to get the whole grid thing perfect or atleast close to perfect. Also play around with the grid preferences until you get something that you are comfortable working with.