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Greyscale Image with a Spot of Colour

   For both PSP V5 & V6
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Greyscale Image
with a Spot of Colour
Created by: Kawliga

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For this tutorial you'll need an image to work with. If you haven't got one available, you can download the example image attached here.

 
Open "/tutorial/html/tuteff/girlwithdog.jpg" from your download. Duplicate the image so we are working on a copy: Go to Window || Duplicate, then close the original image.
 

If you do not yet have the Layer palette open, press "L" to activate it now.

 

Duplicate the background layer: Right-click on the Background button in your layer palette and select "Duplicate" from the pop-up menu. Do this again so you have 2 duplicates of the background.

 
PSP 5:

PSP 6:

Now, lets make the background layer invisible by clicking on the visibility toggle button. I like to keep an extra background for such cases where I make a mistake, and I quickly need a replacement.

Also, click the visibility toggle on the top layer so it is turned off.

 

Activate the middle layer. We are going to make this layer grey. What are some ways we can do that? Using the Grey Scale option is one – but then every layer will turn grey. So, what we will do here is use the Colorize function. Go to Colors || Colorize and set:
Set Hue = 0
Saturation = 0

Click on OK. As you can see, the layer is now grey while the others are still colored. Activate the top layer – see, it is still colored.

 
We will now use the Freehand or Lasso tool on this top layer to get rid of everything except the dog. So, let's first select the area around the dog without going into specifics. Select the Lasso tool and set as follows:
Selection type = Point to Point (since we are selecting a wide area, this would be a quick way to select)
Feather = 0
Antialias = unchecked
Sample merged = unchecked
 
Click at the start of your selection, and just click around the dog. Using Point to Point gives you greater control over the area. If you were to use the Freehand setting you would just end up with some sort of circular selection when you quickly select something. Close your selection with a double-click.
 
Now that we have selected the dog, we will get rid of everything around the dog to let the grey of the layer below shine through. In order to do that, we invert the selection: Go to Selections || Invert. Notice this selected everything around the dog.

Now press the Delete key or go to Edit || Clear to clear the area around the dog. See, the image around the dog is grey, and the dog itself with a small area around it is still colored.

Deselect with Selections || Select None or by right-clicking into the image.

 
Now we will use the Freehand tool to more carefully select the dog.

First zoom in on the dog some more.

 

Select the Lasso tool and set as follows:
Selection Type = Freehand
Feather = 0
Antialias = checked (so the selections will be softened)
Sample merged = unchecked

 

Using small selections, clear the rest of the space around the dog. You do this by selecting a small area, and pressing the Delete key.

If you find it hard to work with the grey background behind the image, just turn the visibility off on the middle layer.

Just make sure that the top layer is still activated while you work on the selections.

 
Just a note – the dog does have a tail, so watch out for it ;o)
 
Once you have finished clearing the areas around the dog, reactivate the middle layer.

You can see a colored dog, on a grey background.

Ever wondered how some people do those black & white images with only a bit of color? Well, you have just learned one way of how to do it.

 
If you want to single out another area to add to this, duplicate the background again, and move the duplicate to the top. Happy creating.
 
 

Once you are done, you can merge the layers by going to Layers || Merge || Merge Visible (or: Merge All) to compress file size.