B+W and colour

[sfage]

Hello everyone.

I have a question about images that combine black and white and colour.

I am trying to create a triptych of poplar trees in autumn. I have already shot the trees and am working on making the surrounding sky B+W. I am using the magic wand tool in photoshop. I am selecting all areas of the sky to remove the saturation but it takes ages because there are literally hundreds of little spots within the tree where the blue sky pokes its way through. Of course, I have to go in to every single little spot, select and desaturate it. Once that's done, the image is "reasonable" but I lose a lot of sharpness around the tree's detail.

Is there an easier way to do this? Is there a "better" way to do this? Is this a "layering" issue?

two examples (of three):

Gray Poplar Diptych 2 | terminus1525.ca

Gray Poplar Diptych 1 | terminus1525.ca

[simon_hughes]

Shane,

Try selecting by color.

[sfage]

Thanks for your speedy reply Simon.

I just figured it out.

Cheers!

[simon_hughes]

Have you tried looking at the individual channels to see if one might be better for creating a mask?

Ciao,

Simon

[sfage]

Hmm.

Nope! I will try that.

This particular fix has solved my problem, though.

I'm sorry if my question(s) seem a little rudimentary but this is a first for me. Generally, I don't create "digital art" per sé. I capture images as they are and frame them with the eye. I don't completely change colours within an image... generally.

I will repost the repaired images.

This is MUCH better.

[sfage]

Okay... I have replaced the file.

I "did" learn one new thing. In a situation like this (dense, complex images) it is better to USM first, then pull the background sky colour out.

It prints as sharp as can be. It works beautifully.

Gray Poplar Diptych 2 | terminus1525.ca

[simon_hughes]

Looks very nice, Shane.

Cheers,

Simon

[steve_l]

What I do for this is to convert to b&w, then select the last color step as source for the history brush, then paint in the objects I want to be in color with the brush....

[odklizec]

For quick desaturation of some parts of images, I'm using Photobrush by Mediachance (not only because I work for them ). There is a tool called "Color Equalizer" allowing the rapid saturation/desaturation of the selected hue by moving few sliders. It works very nice with photos with well separated colors.

For example, this was achieved by simple moving all non-red sliders down and then desaturating some remaining reddish areas outside the tomatoes using the B&W retouch brush. And finally, I did some Brightness/Contrast adjustments. All done in less than 5 min.


The original image as taken by "shrunk" (a DPReview forum member).