Color "masking" (not sure what it's called)

[MJ Dale]

I'm trying to reproduce and effect you see frequently on both still images and film.
The effect is that the image is greyscale, except for one particular colour and its near matches, which is shown.

For example, I recently saw a football (soccer, for you americans out there) advert on TV where everything was greyscale except for the yellow tops worn by one side.

I can't figure out how to go about doing this - can someone explain?

[Thomas Madsen]

MJ Dale wrote:

> I can't figure out how to go about doing this - can someone explain?

You'll find a nice tutorial on Adobe's Expert Center on how
to accomplish just that.

<http://studio.adobe.com/learn/tips/phsselective/main.html>
(You need an Adobe ID to read it).

--
Regards
Madsen.

[Don McCahill]

I haven't seen the tutorial, but how about this method.

Take the original pix of the soccer players.

Duplicate the layer.

Desaturate the colors on the top layer, making it greyscale.

Use the tool of your choice to erase the greyscale version of the sweaters, allowing the color layer to show through.

[YrbkMgr]

Change a graysacale image mode to RGB if it's not already, pick a color, use the paintbrush and a blend mode from the options bar - I want to say, color(?) blend mode.

[Colin Walls]

How about this:
1) Add a Hue/Sat adjustment layer
2) On the image use the magic wand [and maybe Select Similar] to select the areas you want to be still coloured
3) Invert the selection
4) Click on the adjustment layer and add a mask [which will pick up your selection]
5) Double-click on the adjustment layer thumbnail and wind down saturation
Obviously a little fine-tuning by hand of the mask may be necessary.

[MJ Dale]

Thank you all for your replies!

I also, while thumbing through the tutorials, found yet another method which works quite well so long as (like me in this case) you want to apply the effect to the whole image.
Using the hue/saturation dialog box, I chose to edit yellows. I then moved the modification markers to cover everything EXCEPT the yellows, and set the saturation to zero - simple!

The nice thing about doing it that way is that you can easily pick out two or three colours if you want (by adding more adjustment regions to the bar and leaving gaps where appropriate) and you get the nice adjustable fade in/out of your alterations.