Color in a BW

[myphotocreation]

I've been sitting in front of my computer for hours now trying to figure out a

way to turn a color photo into a black and white photo, but keeping the

original eye color? I read how to add color to BW but I really want to keep the

original color of the eyes because they are a perfect blue. Sorry I'm extremely

new with editing photo's and I'm going crazy.

 

Thanks Kathleen Olsen<div></div>

[kevinteo]

For Photoshop: Duplicate the image into a second layer. Desaturate the background layer,

then use a magnetic lasso or a magic wand (vary the tolerance until you get the tool selects

just the boundaries that you want) to select the eyes on the top layer, invert the selection and

cut away everything else in that layer.<div></div>

[sam_thompson2]

You can do it pretty easily in Picasa. Its a free download. They call it Focal B&W. Since you have two sources. What you need to do is make two copies. One for each eye and then copy and paste one eye unto the other.

 

This version took me 5 minutes.

[colinsouthern]

As per Kevin's advice - except - if you're feeling lazy, don't select the eyes - just carefully erase around them.

 

For an added touch of pizaz you can add a Hue-Saturation-Brightness layer ABOVE your colour eyes layer and boost or change their colour from there.

[colinsouthern]

One more for the road :)<div></div>

[Brad_]

After creating a layer separating the eyes from the rest, you can also do better on the B&W

conversion using Image > Adjustments > Gradient Map, and then select on of the B&W

gradients. Then, applying a wide radius unsharp mask at 20-50-0 will provide some pop.

<P>

 

<a href= "http://pages.sbcglobal.net/b-evans/Images23/BlueEyes.jpg">Here's my edit</

a>.

[jcuknz]

When doing the paste that Sam suggests you need to ensure that you paste the B&W eye onto the color eye. So instead of pasting the colour eye onto the B&W photo you would need to "invert" the selection so that you were pasting everything but the eye of the B&W version onto the colour print.

 

B&W photos are 8-bit while color is 24-bit and an 8-bit file cannot hold color, but a 24bit file will hold an 8bit image. That is the crux of this endeavour, however you go about it.

 

There is one wrinkle that when making the selection of the eye with a degree of 'feather' when you invert the feather works inwards to the eye instead of outwards to the cheek so one needs to make the selection further outwards, or no feather.

[myphotocreation]

Thank you so much everyone, you all were very helpful. I can now finally stop pulling my hair out of my head. I acctually copied both eyes in color and just pasted them on the BW, I'm still playing with it though. Thought you all might like to see what I've got so far.<div></div>

[sprouty]

I thought colorize B&W images were outlawed in the 70's?

[myphotocreation]

What it isn't the 70's!

[albert_smith]

If this is something that you can see yourself doing often, and you would rather not sit in front of a computer, then there is an alternative in the form of an in-camera effect.

 

On my Canon A620 (and on many other Canon cameras), there is a simple function to make a black and white photo with any color you choose to be rendered normally. You set the function, point to the color and then after locking that color in, go on composing and shooting. I don't use this often, but as a reply to your post, I did a quick shot using myself, so it is not about the composition or artistic rendering, but just an example. I pointed the camera at some blue in a magazine that was close to my eyes, then aimed it at myself with just window light as the light source. Total time, 2 minutes.

 

With your cute model, and some better composition at the longer end of the zoom, you could have dozens of B&W photos with blue eyes in way less time than a frame-by-frame conversion from a series.

 

There are many posibilities here... think of a red rose and red lipstick on a B&W portrait. Anyway, this is just one other way to reach your desired results.<div></div>

[sprouty]

<I>"...think of a red rose and red lipstick on a B&W portrait.</I>

<P>

Dear god, please stop this madness.

[sprouty]

BTW Albert, thank you for my new wall paper.

[myphotocreation]

Thanks Albert I'll ahve to check my Nikon camera to see if it has the same capabilities.