The assignment: “Color splash is a technique to emphasize details- you remove all color from a photo, and then restore original color to a single object, e.g. a green apple on a table. Think of the Girl in the red dress from Schindler’s List.”

So, I chose a picture of my friend, Emily, because her shirt was a very bright magenta color.   I looked online for a few ways to do it using photoshop.  I was having a tricky time with the tools, so I improvised and used the eraser tool and took advantage of the concept of layers in photoshop.  

I decided that I might as well make a tutorial out of this, for those who are also not as photoshop savy.

First, I loaded my photo into photoshop (clicked and dragged it from the desktop to the photoshop icon).  I then selected the entire photo, then copied and pasted it right onto the same document.  This creates another layer.  

Next, make the top Layer (Layer 1) black and white.  Image>Adjustments>Black & White.

It should look something like this:

I then used the eraser tool and erased from the black and white area the part that I wanted to be in color, in this case, my friend’s shirt.  You want to make sure that you are on Layer 1 (it will be highlighted) when you are erasing, otherwise it will look like you are doing nothing or a message will pop up saying something about the layer not being selected.  In case you didn’t know, the Eraser tool is found about the Paint Bucket Tool and the History Brush Tool.  You will be able to tell immediately when it is working.  Zooming in and adjusting the size of the eraser makes it easier for smaller or more detailed areas.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

I made this as an example for a new ds106 Visual Assignment, Splash The Color- this is the effect of accentuating parts of an image by reducing it to black and white, and then re-coloring or restoring the color of parts of the photo. See examples from Photobucket or many groups on flickr.

Color splash is a technique to emphasize details- you remove all color from a photo, and then restore original color to a single object, e.g. a green apple on a table. Think of the Girl in the red dress from Schindler’s List.

You can do this in a number of ways with photo editing software or using mobile apps. The answer lies in the Google

The tags for this assignment are: VisualAssignments, VisualAssignments340

I’ve come across a few variations on how to do this, the easiest (how I did it) via Photoshop and the history brush, a slient demo is here:

In my words–

• Open the color image in Photoshop
• As a precaution duplicate the layer so you are working on a copy
• Select Image -> Adjustments -> Black and White to remove all color. You might tweak the sliders to give the image a boost, or more contrast.
• Zoom in on the area you will work with, you want to be able to get close to the edges.
• Selcet the History Brush tool.
• Select a brush size from the top menu, preferably with a feathered edge.
• Start brushing the object you want to colorize; as you paint, the original color is painted back in. Its better to work from the middle out. As you get to the edge, make your brush smaller to fine tune the margins (you know, all that old coloring book stay inside the lines stuff)

• Do just enough to bring out the detail of one object, or a group of similar object.
• Save, post, and blog about it!

A more complicated approach would be to paint an object a different color than the original…. That might be for another day.