software for color accent?

You can do this in Photoshop, although it takes a few extra steps.

First, you'll need to create a duplicate of your image in a new layer. Then, go to "Select" in the menubar and choose "Colour Range…"
Now you can use the colour picker to choose the colours you want selected. You may have to click on a few different areas of the colour for it to select all of the colour.
On your duplicated layer click the "Black and White" adjustment layer button. At this point you should have some of your image in colour and some in black and white, but if it is the opposite of what you want then select the mask on the adjustment layer and invert it.

Of course, it's going to take a bit of playing around to get it to look just right. Also, if you want to remove colour that you don't want use the brush tool set to white and paint out those areas on the mask.

I know it's a bit convoluted to read, so I hope it makes sense.

Yes, it does. And here's a webpage that will tell you how to do it: http://video-books.net/elementsplus/en_US/select-color-range.htm

Doing it in Elements takes longer, but gives you more control. There are a couple of Apps on the App Store that work pretty well - Color Splash and Hand Tint. Hand Tint gives you some other options also. I have done several of these photos and no seems to like them except me. Oh, well.

davidinva said:

Doing it in Elements takes longer, but gives you more control. There are a couple of Apps on the App Store that work pretty well - Color Splash and Hand Tint. Hand Tint gives you some other options also. I have done several of these photos and no seems to like them except me. Oh, well.

Click to expand...

No one likes them (as good of photos as they may be) because most people view selective colouring as over-done and not anything "serious" photographers do. It's kind of like way over-the-top HDR images.

That being said, it's a good thing to know how to do (and do well) if a client ever wants it and some images it really works for, no matter what people say.

I should add that Hand Tint can be used for hand coloring old (historic) black & white photos with results that approximate the hand-tinting that was done in those days. It's fun to play with. You're right about what people expect - life like color with everything in perfect focus.