Converting a color photo to Grayscale while retaining color eyes

[jeremiah_johnston]

Is there a way to convert a color photo (head shot) into a grayscale

image and retain the eye color (a light blue) from the original

color photo. The only thing that I can manage is instead of

converting to a grayscale I have to go into

image>adjustments>channel mixer, check the monochrome box but I

don?t like the results. When I try to add the colored eyes back into

the converted grayscale image it turns the eyes into grayscale as

well. Any suggestions?

[denisgermain]

create a duplicate for your Conversion then Mask out the eyes on the color Layer....

http://www.escrappers.com/tinted.html

[gpdno]

Do it with layers. Duplicate your layer and change it to grayscale. With your color layer

below, erase the eyes on the B&W layer. The eyes on the color layer will show through.

[shawngibson]

Don't convert to greyscale; keep it RGB. Do what you are doing with the channel mixer to come up with a monochrome layer, but add a duplicate layer of your original first. Once you've a monochrome under-layer you like, go to the second layer you just made and erase everything but the eyes. Tweak the eyes from there as you think the pic calls for, I'd suggest a Hue/Saturation fix. for BOTH layers, I'd use adjustment layers regarding the channel mixer and hue/saturation, so that your original work remains intact and can be tweaked indefinitely till you're happy.

 

To get really free, which you don't really have to in this case, you can add a mask to the eyes layer, so that your erasing is infinitely undoable as well...

 

Photoshop is lots of fun:)

[mag_miksch]

dont erase something, use mask where you can paint black or white

[mendel_leisk]

My approach:

 

Take a snapshot in the history palette.

 

Set history brush to source from that snapshot.

 

Desaturate (but retain rgb format)

 

Paint the eyes back into color with history brush.

[andreas_weber]

> When I try to add the colored eyes back into the converted grayscale image it turns the eyes into grayscale as well.

 

Well, of course it does. It's supposedd to. The grayscale image can't show colors (By the way, the foreground/background color patches in your toolbox turned gray, too, when you converted your image, didn't they?).

 

To add color information back to your grayscale image you have to convert it back to RGB (No, the colors won't come back.) Then you can add the colored eyes, and they will stay colored.

 

Andreas