Converting Part of a Photo to Black and White

by Barbara Snyder

Converting part of a photo to black and white is an interesting technique to highlight or deemphasize a portion of a photo that may be unusable or less than attractive.

Fix #1: Converting a distracting background to black and white

Your picture may have a very distracting background. Start by "selecting" the subject. Click on the selection brush in the tool bar and set feathering (in the upper tool bar) to approximately 10 pixels (you may need to adjust this to achieve a slightly softened edge to your selection) and choose a soft edged medium sized brush. Begin carefully drawing around the edges of the subject, then continue to use the brush to select the entire subject. Once you have selected the subject, go back to "Select" in the toolbar and check on "Inverse". Now your background is selected. To change the background to black and white, click on "Enhance" in the top horizontal toolbar, "Adjust Color--Remove Color". If you would like, you may blur the background (Filter--Blur--Blur More or Gaussian Blur) and piddle with the settings till you find one that appeals to you. You may also want to lighten or darken the background by choosing Enhance--Adjust Color--Hue and Saturation. When the background is enhanced to your satisfaction, click on Select--Deselect, flatten your image (Layer--Flatten Image) and "Save As".

This photo had a very distracting background with a dog lying on the floor, and a portion of a fireplace showing. Here is the photo, fixed, and used in a layout:

Fix #2: Emphasizing a portion of a photo by changing it to black and white.

Recently I took a photo that I really liked, but was disappointed to see that it had a reflection of me in the the rear view mirror. I started out by cropping the photo to remove the rearview mirror. I soon discovered that the photo would be ruined by cropping it out and it occurred to me to change the rear view mirror to black and white to de-emphasize it.

I started by cropping the picture to my liking and then did some corrections to the picture using the Quick Fix options located in the toolbar under Enhancement.

Next I changed the rear view mirror to black and white. I selected the rear view mirror, using a medium sized brush, feathered slightly (approximately 10 pixels) and then changed it to black and white by clicking on Enhance--Adjust Color--Remove Color. The result was unbalanced and a bit too small. I sat and looked at the picture, disappointed that it looked so bad, and then it occurred to me that instead of changing the rear view mirror to black and white to de-emphasize it, I would use the black and white image to emphasize that part of the picture. Since the balance was wrong, I needed to make it bigger. I copy/pasted the selection into a new layer and enlarged it to balance the picture. I did do some enhancing of the black and white portion, adjusting the levels and using the sharpen tool to de-noise it. Flatten the image and "Save As". Here is the finished photo.

And here is how I used the picture in my layout.