Photo Effects: Adding Focus To An Image With Color

Step 3: Sample A Color To Use For Colorizing The Image (Optional)

We're going to be adding our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in a moment, but before we do, if you want to colorize the image rather than turning it black and white, grab your Eyedropper tool from the Tools palette:

You can also press the letter I on your keyboard to quickly select it. We're going to sample a color from the image, and then we'll be using that color to colorize the image a bit later on. With the Eyedropper tool selected, click on a color in the image that you want to sample. I'm going to sample a brown color from the face of one of the horses:

Once you've sampled your color, you'll see that color now appearing as the Foreground color in the Tools palette:

Step 4: Add A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Now that we've sampled our color, we can add our Hue/Saturation adjustment layer. To do that, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:

Then choose Hue/Saturation from the list of Adjustment Layers that appears:

One of the great things about adjustment layers is that each one comes with its own layer mask, which allows us to limit the effect of the adjustment layer to specific areas in the image. Since we had the area that we want to remove the color from selected when we added the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, Photoshop will use that selection when creating the layer mask, as we can see if we look at the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette:

The area that was selected before I added the adjustment layer, which in my case was everything except the three horses and jockeys in the foreground of the image, appears as white in the layer mask, which means it will be affected by the adjustment. The horses and their jockeys, which were not selected, appear as black and will not be affected.

Step 5: Drag The Saturation Slider To The Left To Remove The Color

With the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer added, removing the color at this point is easy. Simply click on the Saturation slider in the Hue/Saturation dialog box and drag it all the way to the left. As you drag to the left, you'll see the color disappearing in the image, and dragging all the way to the left removes the color completely:

Your image should now look like this, with everything black and white except for the areas we initially selected where we wanted the color to remain:

If this was all you wanted to do with the image, you could end here, but on the next page, we're going to be using the color we sampled to tint the black and white areas, and we'll also be bringing some of the original color back in to complete the effect.