Photoshop Blending Modes: Make Color Pop Out of Black-and-White Pictures

Sometimes in ads, you'll see what looks like a black-and-white picture, but some of it is in color, drawing your eye like a magnet. There may be one person in color among a sea of grayscale faces, or perhaps the product being sold is in brilliant color, surrounded by calm grays. This is known in the ad biz as "Let's do something artsy," and like many artsy things, it's actually easier than it looks.

You can create this same effect using an incredibly simple technique in Photoshop. This tutorial will cover some very basic but useful concepts:

selecting a brush mode
using keyboard shortcuts to select brush sizes
painting the color out of an image

Open the image
First, open the image you want to change in Photoshop.

Select the brush tool
Now, select the brush tool by clicking on its icon or by typing the letter "B." When you select the brush tool, notice the bar across the top of the screen that says "Brush," "Mode," "Opacity," and "Flow." This is Photoshop's tool options bar, and it changes depending on which tool you have selected.

Select the Color blending mode
In the options bar, click next to Mode where it says Normal. Scroll down and select the Color blending mode. If you think this dropdown menu looks suspiciously like the blending modes menu in the Layers palette, that's because you're right. In addition to applying blending modes to layers, we can paint using them as well.

Choose a large, soft-edged brush
In the options bar again, click next to Brush and select a large, fuzzy-looking one. Don't worry too much about the size; I'll show you an easy way to change it.

Paint over the image
Take a look at the outline of your brush on the image. Want it to be bigger? Press the right bracket key ( ] ). Want it smaller? Press the left bracket key ( [ ). Now that you've selected a brush and your painting mode, begin painting! Paint over the areas that you want to be black and white, around whatever you want to keep in color. Image 5 shows the image in the process of being turned grayscale by painting with the brush in this manner.

Select a smaller brush for up-close work
Once you have the large outer areas of the image out of the way, press the left bracket key ( [ ) and select a smaller brush for the finer work close to your color area.

And that's it! Using Photoshop's brush tool and paint blending modes you've turned an ordinary color photograph into an edgy contrast of bright color and somber grayscale that's worthy of the moodiest French art films. I'd recommend you pat yourself on the back, but that would simply be showing too much emotion for our serious artist selves.