digg

Just a plain desaturate is no way to make an image black and white, and a layer mask would be much more practical than the history brush.

This is sometimes known as the Pleasantville effect.

From his flickr account...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/henryscat/151391043/in/set-72057594140769356/

I think this is one of the coolest pictures I've seen in a while, I have to start trying this *****.

"First of all you are going to need a picture that is suitable for the task. This should be a colour image..."

So almost immediately, the title is totally inaccurate. This isn't at all about adding color to black and white photographs. It's about selectively removing color from color photos. There's a world of difference in the two techniques, there.

(Not saying it doesn't look cool, just that it's not going to help me colorize any old photos like the title claims.)

I love this technique and have used it in the past. I've also experimented with not desaturating all the way. A subtle hint of color for the whole image is kinda nice too.

I personally would fire any photographer who tried to 'wow' me with this technique.

I dunno how I feel about that. I've never really seen an image done using this technique that worked for me. The colors are always too strong.

However, it would be fun attempting something like this in a darkroom setting, e.g. toning parts of the image with different colors of kool-aid.

forget the fact that he says to use the desaturate tool, he says opening a file is "understanding the basics of photoshop." honestly, there are some people that could use photoshop for a year and not understand the basics.

besides that the photos dont even look that good.

i'm all for stuff like this to help people learn, but in my opinion most of this stuff just spreads the myth that photoshop makes bad photos good, not the fact that it makes great photos even better.

Who hasn't seen this a thousand times, and who the hell doesn't know how to do this in photoshop by now? And this is nothing new to photography, look in any basic darkroom technique book from 30 years ago and you'll see this through selective toning, hand coloring, etc.

This is the tackiest, nastiest thing anyone can do to their wedding pictures. This would be great... in 1981.
I just threw up in my mouth a little. I'll take a picture and desaturate everything but the vomit.
Thanks, tutorial!

I think if he would tone down the saturation it would look better the color just becomes a distraction. It doesn't balance with the black and white especially the red ribbon from the flickr account.

This was the lamest Photoshop tutorial ever.

...or you could just take good, real black and white photos. and leave it at that.

desaturation does not make black and white photos. it just makes washed out, low contrast grayscale.

Oh yeah... right after I plunk down the $600 for PS, I'll be whipping these turds out left and right...

i bet i still won't be able to do it

Yeah this WAS cool and deep and all that stuff until every stupid bitch that gave every guy in the school head had to post a black and white picture with a color object or one of their own pictures like that on their ***** myspace.

The first time I saw this particular artistic trick was in the the video for "Celebrate Youth" by Rick Springfield:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl32ZHB4jYc

This was in late 1984/early 1985.

Superior cheese. Why not go all the way and use a photo of a clown crying? Make the teardrops blue! Then sell them by the boxload on The Shopping Network.

dugg for the kilt

Recolored makes this process a whole lot easier ( http://www.recolored.com/ ).

Isn't this technique commonly referred to as "being a hack"? In my local mall during the springtime, the photographers have large display kiosks hoping to influence kids getting their Senior pictures and people getting married. All of them do this hacky ***** with the red rose in the black and white picture, or my favorite, LENS FLARE.

Some people have no taste. Whatever happened to good composition?

Getting old hat these days, used to wow but everyone and their dog can do it now.

Why every photoshop tutorial always makes it to the front page, even the very simple ones?
Seriously, just buy a book... and you'll get them all in one shot :)

I suggest "The Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers" and "Adobe Photoshop CS: The Art of Photographing Women". You'll learn a lot from these books.
But yeah... there are many other good books...

I for one happen to be a professional photographer and I DESPISE this technique, tacky, overdone, and just plain amateur. I've seen it done well a few times in my life but please everyone, spare yourself and your photos! To put it in web design terms this is the equivalent of blinking text. Seems like a good idea at the time but...

Why do these beginner level Photoshop tutorials keep making the front page? This is super basic stuff, I can't believe anyone actually learnt anything by reading this tutorial.

This almost always looks tacky. "Professional" photographers use it constantly to show that they can do "special effects." Any 12 year old with photoshop can do this. It's not hard and it always looks retarded. Especially when you take a photo of a girl and make it black and white except for her pretty blue eyes. Bah.

/Drunk

the guy who uses desaturate command to change color image to b/w doesn't deverve any respect!

Cheesey, overrated and overused.

Eh, good for beginners trying to experiment, though the technique and style is decidedly cliche. He should elaborate more on desaturating an image, because simple hitting desaturate is no way to do it.

People who sparingly see photoshopped images and just want "pretty pretty pictures" are often impressed with things like this though. Go figure.

Eck. Wedding photography ;x

good grief will people stop using this hackneyed look - it's cheesy and over-used!

I don't see how this has so many diggs. Basically, the point of the so-called "tutorial" was to be careful when brushing the color back into the picture. Lame.

Didn't find this tutorial that interesting but there are lots of other little gems on this site. Thumbs up.

interesting tutorial and a good exercise but if you just want to colorize and image and are not committed to photoshop then i would try blackmagic
http://www.black-and-white-to-color.com

This is a stills version of the software that they use to professionally color black and white movies, it is however very inexpensive and suprisingly easy to use. But if you are a PS purist then it may be embarassingly easy !!

That's great tool, thanks man.

http://www.mbt-shoes.us

wow, this is like 21st century. Now I can color my fathers & grandfathers photos.

http://www.betseyjohnsonshoes.us/ gr8