Quick Photoshop Tip Needed

[donklaus]

Hi all - can someone give me a quick tip on accomplishing the following in Photoshop CS 5.5, or connect with a how-to?

I have a color photo shot in RAW of a red firetruck in front of a crumbling old neo-classical building. I'd like to leave the red body of the firetruck in vivid red and convert the rest of the image to B & W. In Camera RAW I can reduce the vibrance to achieve nearly the effect, however the red in the truck becomes much less vivid and is not the effect I want.

Any tips! Much appreciated.

 

[ComputersaysNo]

You really don't want to do this, as it is mostly used in those cards you send when somebody has passed away, or to honor Bob Ross. But here's how:

- Convert the image to tiff (or jpg if the quality doesn't matter that much)
choose 'Duplicate layer'. You now have the same image laying on top of the original

- Choose 'desaturate' (with any tool you know how to do that. Can be an adjustmentlayer or simply going to image - adjustments - color & saturation slider) on the top layer, and desaturate that bad boy.
- Pick the eraser and erase all but the red firetruck of the top layer.
OR select the firetruck of the toplayer with the selectiontool, invert selection and hit delete.
- Merge layers to one. Save in format of your liking.
Done

 

[MCAsan]

From Aperture/LR/PS you could use Nik Color Efex Pro to also selectively desaturate the scene except for the truck. The plugin would handle the layers and masks behind the scenes.

 

[donklaus]

Perfect - here's a quick and dirty result

You really don't want to do this, as it is mostly used in those cards you send when somebody has passed away, or to honor Bob Ross. But here's how:

- Convert the image to tiff (or jpg if the quality doesn't matter that much)
choose 'Duplicate layer'. You now have the same image laying on top of the original

- Choose 'desaturate' (with any tool you know how to do that. Can be an adjustmentlayer or simply going to image - adjustments - color & saturation slider) on the top layer, and desaturate that bad boy.
- Pick the eraser and erase all but the red firetruck of the top layer.
OR select the firetruck of the toplayer with the selectiontool, invert selection and hit delete.
- Merge layers to one. Save in format of your liking.
Done

Here's a quick first try, though I am heartbroken that adding "happy little clouds" or expressions of sympathy is frowned upon . Thanks very much for the quick - and helpful - response.

 

[donklaus]

Also ...

Here's a quick first try, though I am heartbroken that adding "happy little clouds" or expressions of sympathy is frowned upon . Thanks very much for the quick - and helpful - response.

Never fear - I'm working on removing the power line via clone-stamp as we speak.

 

[monokakata]

OT, but that's an interesting firetruck.

If you have time after you finish the clone-stamping, could you post a little bit about it? If it's something as simple as a tanker, I'll be disappointed.

 

[Laird Knox]

While your at it you might want to pull up the blacks and/or contrast of the background layer. It seems a little flat to me. (But that could just be me. )

 

[cambookpro]

One way that I've done this, to just select a certain colour, eg red, is to use Select > Colour Range.

Then keep adding the colours you want until you get the 'marching ants' around those colours. Clean them up with the lasso tool, then Cmd-shift-I to invert the selection and reduce the saturation and up the contrast.

To me, it's a lot quicker than any other method, though may not be as accurate.