Explore the step-by-step process for editing a construction worker's photo in Photoshop, with a focus on isolating the subject by making him in color against a black and white background. Learn the process of managing layers, adjusting colors, making modifications, and using the masking tool to achieve the desired effect.
Key Insights
- The tutorial walks you through the process of creating layers for the black and white background and the color layer for the construction worker. This allows for precise editing and preservation of the original image.
- While deleting parts of the color layer to reveal the black and white layer is possible, it is not recommended due to the inability to recover the deleted parts. Instead, the tutorial suggests using a mask for better control and reversibility of the process.
- The mask works based on a black and white scale where the white parts show with full opacity, and the black parts allow lower layers to show through at zero percent opacity. This tool is used to allow the color of the worker to show against the black and white background.
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In this video we're going to start working on the photo of the construction worker who will be going into our frame. So let's begin by opening this Photoshop file.
We can go to file, open, and we're going to be opening up our construction worker adjusted Photoshop file that we've already created, and click open. Looking at this photo, essentially what we want is we want to highlight the image of our construction worker. If we look back at PTC banner 2, we'll see that we only have a small diamond shape to focus on this individual.
And the idea for this photo that I had is that we'll make the background black and white, however we'll leave the construction worker in color. So let's go through the process of how to do this. We've already got our construction worker original layer of the original photo, and we're going to toggle the visibility of this layer, as well as make sure that it's locked, so that if anything goes wrong, we always have this layer preserved.
In addition, for our construction worker adjusted photo, we're going to actually change this to construction worker black and We'll double click the title, and we'll type black and white, and hit ENTER. Now that we've got our black and white layer, we want to create another layer of the construction worker in color. To do this, we'll drag this layer down to the bottom, and create a new layer.
We'll title this construction worker color, and hit ENTER. We now have one layer that's designated as black and white, and one layer that's designated as color. So let's make these changes.
We'll start with the black and white layer, and toggle the visibility of our color layer. Next, we're going to make it black and white. We can do this by going to our adjustments, and we're going to use the black and white adjustment layer.
We can already see that automatically it's changed to black and white. However, we can make some modifications. We drag these layers down.
We can start to make a couple tweaks. We'll toggle this layer on and off to see what colors are apparent. We've got some green and blue, a little bit of red.
We'll put the visibility back on, and it looks like we'll see the most change in our greens and blues. I'll move the greens up, and I'll move the blues up as well. We want this to be a relatively light image.
In addition, we can make some modifications by again using the tool allowing us to click and drag within the image. If we click this, and let's say we want some of these shadows brought up. We can click and drag to the right a little bit.
We'll do the same thing on this bar. Click and drag up, and this looks pretty good. Next, let's start working with our construction worker color layer.
We'll toggle the visibility, and essentially all we want this layer to be is of the actual worker himself. The rest will show through from the black and white layer below. So our goal now is to essentially capture him and make it so that only he's showing in color, and the rest of the black and white is showing below.
Let's save our work. Hitting CTRL S on the keyboard to save, and now let's talk about one way we could do this. One possible way that we could do this is by taking this construction worker color layer, and simply deleting pieces of the layer that aren't important.
For example, we could go to our selection tools, and we'll select the rectangular marquee tool, and if we determined that this entire left-hand side, the section that doesn't contain any of his body, doesn't need to be shown in color, we can hit the delete key on our keyboard, and it'll show the black and white bottom through. We could do that to a couple sections, and simply begin deleting pieces of our color image, and this is one way we might be able to achieve this effect. If we were to continue doing it this way, we'd go into our selection tools, and use different selection pieces to be able to hover over them, select them, and delete them, like this.
However, the one disadvantage here is that if we accidentally selected a piece, and kept going, and saw later that we didn't mean to delete it, and we wanted this back in color, there's unfortunately no way to get this back. We would have to start all the way over, or hit CTRL Z until we found the piece that we accidentally deleted. So while this may be one option that could work, it may not be the best option for a situation like this.
Let's talk about one way that may work better. We'll hit CTRL Z multiple times until we've received all of the color back into our image, and we're starting fresh with our image again, and then we'll hit CTRL D to deselect. The other way that we can help just the construction worker to stand out from a black and white background, is by creating a mask.
So with the construction worker color selected, we can go down to the bottom and add a mask. We've now added a mask to our construction worker in color. The way that a mask works is essentially showing white and black where the mask shows through and doesn't.
Everything that is white will show with full 100 opacity, whereas everything that is black will have lower layers show through it at zero percent opacity. For example, if we select our mask by selecting the icon to the right of the image, we can then use our paintbrush tool on the left to draw black on this image. We'll change our fill color on the left hand side, and drag it down to black, and click ok.
And next, if we want to change the size of our brush tip, we can go to the top, and let's drag it up to about 400 or so. Now we have a nice large brush tip, and now if we begin drawing black over our mask, we'll see that it turns black and white. We can color in a lot of this left hand side and some of the top, and we'll see that the black and white from the layer below, our black and white layer, shows through where we've colored in the black.
If you'd like to see the work you've already done on the mask, simply hover over the mask icon and hold in ALT, click on the mask. We can now see what we've done to the mask. The left hand is black side, the right is white, and if we hit ALT and click the icon again, we'll see that that's where the black and white shows through, and the color is on the right.
Let's save our work thus far, hitting CTRL S, and in the next video, we'll begin strategically painting this mask so that only the worker shows through in color. See you there!