Digital Diversity

Have you have ever looked at pictures you have taken or even just looked at the world around you and wondered what it would look like if everything was a different colour. Maybe the sky would be green or the leaves on the trees a brilliant orange?

Do you have old black and white photo’s that you would love to see in colour?

Well you don’t have to wonder about it, just do it using Photoshop. This tutorial will show you how to alter colours or even add colour to black and white using hue / saturation adjustment layers.

Re-colour your world

For this I am going to use a nice and simple image from my library.

Add a Hue / Saturation adjustment layer above your image layer. Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue / Saturation. In the adjustment layer options window make sure the colorize option is ticked. This will add a colour cast to your image. Change the Hue to get the desired colour. Adjust the saturation and lightness if needed. Then hide the adjustment layer by clicking the eye symbol.

The next step is to use the mask on the adjustment layer to make it effect only the parts of the image you want to be that colour. The tree is a fairly complicated subject to mask due to its fine detail of leaves and the small gaps revealing the sky behind it.

If you have not used selection tools and masks before I suggest you read the tutorials on layers and their masks and selection tools and advanced masking before continuing.

To make this easier select your Magic wand tool. Set your tolerance to about 50. Click on a blue part of the sky and you should get a selection line going all around the tree. Go Select > Similar and you should find all the small parts of sky that are visible through the tree are now also selected as in the example image.

The sky should now all be selected. Make your adjustment layer visible again. Select the mask on your adjustment layer and fill the selection in black. This should leave a white shape of the tree and the grass on the mask making the tree and grass red on your image.

Duplicate the current Hue / Saturation adjustment layer. Then select the mask. If you don’t have the selection visible any more Ctrl click on the mask to bring it back. Then on the new adjustment layer fill it in white. Then invert the selection by going Select > Inverse. Then fill the selection in black. You should have a mask that is the exact opposite of the previous adjustment layer.

Using the new adjustment layer change the colour to something different. You will be left with a sky that is one colour and a tree and grass that are another.

Duplicate the first adjustment layer you made (right click > duplicate). Change the colours again to something different. Then carefully paint black on the mask to hide the leaves. This will leave you with the grass and tree trunk in the new colour.

Duplicate the new adjustment layer and change the colour again. Now use black on the mask to hide the tree trunk leaving you with just the grass in the new colour.

You have now separated all the elements of the page and they all have new colours. The best thing about adjustment layers is that you can go back and change them when ever you want. If you don’t like these colours you can just choose different ones till you find the combination you like best.

Here are 3 examples

You can basically choose what ever colours you want. Its a simple matter of getting the masks right and then worrying about the colours later.

Re-colour black and white images

This exact same technique can be used to add colour to black and white images as well.

Frist I open my black and white image.

For the first Hue / Saturation adjustment layer I chose a nice pink colour then, using the mask, painted in the petals.

On the next adjustment layer I used a green and painted in the stem and leaves.

The final part was to make the background darker. I did this with a third Hue / Saturation adjustment layer and adjusted the lightness slider to make it almost totally black to finish off the image.

Advanced colouring tips

You may find that using the hue, saturation and lightness doesn’t give you the colours you need. For more advanced colour options add a Contrast and Levels adjustment layer to each Hue / Saturation layer. Make sure they only effect the Hue / Saturation adjustment layer by linking them (holding down Alt and clicking between the layers to indent them).

Get as close as possible to the colour you want using the Hue / Saturation layer. Then tweak it to perfection using the contrast and levels layers.

Using this technique you can add colour to more complicated images such as portraits.

View the finished example image in large to see how the layers are stacked.

Original image is from iStock then converted to black and white to appear as bellow.

Then advanced colouring was used to re colour it.

This method could be used to restore old black and white images your family may have laying about. It can also be used to change single elements of an image, such as a persons hair or skin colour. Maybe you want to see what you would look like with a tan and blond hair? Well just open your photo in Photoshop and use the advanced colouring technique to find out.

Selection tools have many uses. They can be used to help with creating masks, cut out sections of an image, make effects only apply to the selected area and be used to move parts of an image.

This tutorial will explain the different selection tools available, show how they can be used to help create masks and also an advanced masking technique that can be very accurate and fast.

All the selection tools shown in this tutorial are for Photoshop Elements. These same tools are available in the full version of Photoshop as well.

Different selection tools

The different selection tools available are:

○ Marquee shapes – rectangular and elliptical in elements. CS also has single row and single column

○ lasso’s – 3 kinds of these. Normal, Polygonal and Magnetic

○ Magic wand

○ Quick selection

○ Selection brush – called quick mask in CS

First up is the marquee shapes.

These are the most simple of the selection tools. You choose your shape type, then by clicking and dragging, create the selection. If you haven’t used a selection before, try making one such as in the picture above. Then use the paint brush to colour it in. You will notice you can only colour the area that has been selected. Also try selecting the arrow tool. you will be able to drag and drop your selection where ever you want, effectively cutting it out from the image. You can even paste and copy it into other layers or images.

The lasso’s are a lot more accurate but take more skill to use. If cutting out complicated shapes then these should be your first port of call.

Standard lasso

Click and hold down your mouse button. Now move your mouse around and it will start drawing a selection line. When you release the button it will connect up to the starting point completing your selection.

Polygonal lasso

This is similar to the standard lasso except it creates a point when ever your click the button. So click once to give you a starting point. Then every time you click a new point will be created leaving a straight selection line between each click. This is useful for selecting areas with lots of straight lines.

Magnetic lasso

This one is rather clever. What it does is stick to the edges of things by detecting where the pixels change colour. In the picture above I selected round the ladybugs red shell. To do this, click once on a starting point. Then move your mouse carefully around the edge of the area you want to select. You should notice the selection is sticking to the edges of what you are selecting. You can manually insert additional points by clicking the button as you go. Also change the settings at the top (width, edge contrast and frequency) to adjust its sensitivity. To complete the selection you click on the starting point. It can be a bit odd to use at first but with a bit of practise you should find it a brilliant tool to start off selections.

Magic wand

This one is fantastic for selecting large areas of colour in a single click. If you click on a blue then it will select all the connected blue area that is within its tolerance. The higher the tolerance the more variations of that colour it will allow to be selected. So to select the red shell I set the tolerance to 50. Then, when I click on the red it selects all the reds within that range. You can then get it to select that same colour on the rest of the picture (parts that arn’t joined) by going to Select > Similar. This should now select everything on the page that’s within the tolerance you allowed. Very fast and very easy.

Quick selection

Another fast selection tool. This one you simply click and drag and the tool selects similar colours and tries to detect edges. Has mixed results. Sometimes it can make perfect selections straight away, other times it goes a bit wrong. Mainly depends on how much your subject contrasts with the background. High contrast selections should work great with this tool.

Selection brush

This one has 2 modes. In selection mode you literally paint on the selection. You can change this to mask mode (via the drop down menu ‘Mode:’ at the top of the window). In mask mode you will start painting in red. What you do here is to paint the parts of the image you don’t want to be selected. Then when you change it back the mode back to selection, all the areas not in red will be selected.

Selection tool tips

Once you have made a selection you can select the exact opposite by going Select > Inverse.

Once you have made a selection you can add extra parts to it by holding down the Shift key or delete parts by holding down the Alt key. When you hold either down, your selection tool should have a + or a – next to it to show you what it will do.

Under the ‘Select’ menu at the top of the screen there are a number of things you can do to your selection. For example you can ‘Grow’ your selection. All this does is increase its size slightly. You can also ‘Feather’ it. This will fade the edges which can creating nicer looking cut outs when making your own montages.

If I have a complex shape to select then i tend to start off with the magnetic tool to get a rough outline. When this is done I touch it up with the selection brush, adding and subtracting where needed.

The magic wand is also a personal favourite. Its a brilliant way of selecting large areas of similar colour fast. If can make cutting out a complex subject, such as a tree on a blue sky, very fast and easy.

You can save your selections by going Select > Save Selection. This means you can bring back that selection at any point by going Select > Load Selection.

Using selections to create masks

If you don’t know about masks I suggest you read the layers and their masks tutorial first.

Using a selection to create a mask is very simple. Insert a mask as normal. then create your selection using what ever method is best for the situation. Once your selection is made, select the mask. then fill the selected area in white. Then invert your selection, Select > Inverse, and fill the rest in black. That’s it.

Advanced Masking technique

This next masking technique is great for high contrast images or just getting a good starting point on you mask.

Create a new layer and place it at the bottom of the list, fill it in white. Then add a mask. You may wonder why the mask is in the wrong place in this image. Well it was just me being silly and forgetting to put it in the correct place. I correct it later on but you should set the mask up properly from the start to make it easier for you. Once your layers look like the image above (apart from the obvious mistake), select the image layer and press Ctrl A to select all. This will place a selection line around the whole image.

Press Ctrl C to copy the selection. Then hold down the Alt key and click on the mask. Your screen will turn white. What you are seeing is the mask itself. Press Ctrl V to past the selection into the mask. You will see a black and white image like in the image above.

Now press Ctrl I. This inverts the image so the blacks become white and the whites become black. The idea is the get the areas we want to be visible to become white and the areas to be hidden to become black. As you can see it has started to get closer to what we want.

Go to Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels.

Move the sliders under the histogram about until you have a made as much as possible of the area you want selected white and the area you want hidden black. If using the ladybird image set them to how they are in the image above. Click OK then select your image layer.

Most of the mask is now complete. All you need to do now is select the mask and touch it up using the brush tool as normal.

This technique can be very accurate with the right image. The more the main subject contrasts with the background the better. Try it out on a landscape photo where you want to replace the sky. The mask should hide all the sky even between leaves on trees which would otherwise take a long time to do with the brush tool.

The term ‘Bokeh’ comes from the Japanese word for blur (or so i have read). This term is used for the photographic technique of blurring the background while keeping the subject in focus.

Different people have different ideas about what they would class as a decent bokeh. Some insist it adds something to the picture, some only class a decent bokeh to be one that creates nice circles of light within the blur. Seeing as this is a tutorial aimed more towards the beginner level I will simply be working on the basis of standard blurring of the background in Photoshop. Its main purpose being to help the subject stand out without background distractions.

It is created by something called the Depth of Field (DoF). This is the area in which your photo will be in focus and where it will start to fade out of focus (start to blur). There are 2 main factors involved in controlling the Depth of Field. The aperture and the focal length.

Aperture

Quite simply, the larger the aperture (smaller number) the more blur. This is because larger apertures have smaller Depths of Field than small apertures.

Focal length

You may have heard people tell you to use full zoom when trying to achieve a blurred background. The focal length doesn’t make your depth of field larger or smaller, what it does do is change how the DoF is distributed. For example, using wide angle focal lengths at an aperture of 2.8 will have the same DoF as using full zoom at an aperture of 2.8. However at the wide angle you will have less in focus in front of the subject (point of focus) and more behind. With the telephoto you will have more in focus in front of the subject and less behind. This makes it easier to blur what is behind the subject.

Another aspect that effects this is your distance to the subject. The closer you are the smaller the DoF and therefore easier to blur the background.

If that all sounds a bit confusing try reading this website http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm
I found it explained it fairly well with some nice diagrams to help.

Sensor size

Your cameras sensor size also comes into play with this type of photography. You may often hear people tell you that you cant achieve these bokeh shots with a compact because of their tiny sensors. Well clearly this isn’t completely true. I use a superzoom with a tiny sensor and the example shot at the top clearly has bokeh. The reality is that the smaller your sensor the harder, it is to achieve. This is because smaller sensors naturally have larger depth of fields due to how the smaller sensors and lenses work.

The opposite of this is also true. The larger your sensor the harder it is to have a large DoF. This means your compact actually has a small advantage over larger sensor cameras (such as DSLR’s) for landscape photography where you want everything in focus.

To get round this issue you need to be closer to your subject and you need to use maximum zoom. Also make sure the background is as far away as possible from your subject. What you wont be able to do is have such a shallow depth of field that you can blur a background that’s right behind your subject. Saying that, even DSLR’s need a specific lens to achieve this but you need to know your limits.

What ever camera type you have the basic rules of aperture and focal length apply. The best way to blur your background is to use full zoom and as large an aperture as possible.

In this shot i used full zoom, was about 1-2 meters away and had the aperture wide open. As you can see the ape is sharp while the background is nice and blurred.

Faking it

Sometimes you may find it hard to get the DoF right or you just didn’t think about it at the time. You then put the image on your computer and think it would have looked better if you managed to blur the background. Well you can fake it in Photoshop (CS or elements). It is however tricky to do so be warned, to get a good result can take time. It is always better to try and achieve this in the original shot, especially with hairy subjects. Trying to mask around hair isn’t the easiest thing to do and your final result can look a little odd if not done right.

I will use another of my Gibraltan Ape images that had no bokeh to show how this is done. If you try this yourself you will see how hard it can be to get hair masked properly. With time and patience it can be done. This is a lot easier to do on subjects with smooth, easy to follow outlines.

Right, lets get the starting image up.

This image really could use a blurred background. The people standing there take something away from the subject and make the shot a little crowded.

First thing i did was crop the image slightly. This is to frame the ape a bit better.

Now duplicate the layer. Right click the layer your image is on and click duplicate.

With the new duplicate layer selected you need to add a Gaussian blur.  Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur.

In the Gaussian blur options window, move the slider till the blur amount you want is achieved. For this one i used 25.

You will notice the whole image is now blurred. Before we do any masking you need to make a duplicate of the blurred layer. Right click it and select duplicate from the menu. Make it invisible by clicking the eye on the left of its layer window. Finally add a mask to the top blurred layer.

If you are unsure of how you use masks please visit the layers and there masks tutorial.

Your layers window should now look like this if using CS.

If using elements you will have an extra layer in there for your mask.

The reason we use 2 blurred layers is to create a fading effect that simulates how depth of field works. The top blur layer will be for the main background while the second is for the closer parts of background that lead up to the subject. The idea is to created a gradual blur near the subject that looks more realistic.

So for the top blurred layer we are going to blur the distant background and the area with the people standing behind the ape. Carefully unmask the ape and the area near him. Use a soft brush and be extra careful around the fur. If you end up with hard edges that don’t look right, try using a larger softer brush to slightly blur the tips. This should help it blend a little better.

Now select your other blur layer (the one below). Click the eye to make it visible again. You will notice the whole image blur. Add a layer mask to this layer and select it.

Now select the gradient tool (a rectangle that fades from black to white). Make sure you are using a white to black gradient. Then create a gradient from the top of the apes head going to its feet.

If you havn’t used the gradient tool before then this is what you do. You click and drag it. By this i mean to click where you want the gradient to start, then drag (without releasing the mouse button) to where you want it to end. You should notice a line going from where you clicked to where you are now. Release the button and the gradient is created.

You should now have a gradual blur going from the apes head to its feet.

With the mask still selected, use white to reveal all of the ape and the area on the floor in front of it.

When done you may find that this layer isn’t blurred enough. To fix this simply duplicate the layer by right clicking it and selecting duplicate.

You should notice the blur is now a bit stronger. If you find it to strong then simply reduce that layers opacity a bit.

If you look at the image you will see there is a brown haze going around the apes head. This is an effect of using the blur tool. What we want to do is tuck that in behind the mask so it is no longer visible.

To do this you need to select the smudge tool. It looks like a finger.

This tool literally smudges the work by pushing the pixels about. So with this tool selected, selected the top blur layer and smudge the brown haze into the masked area. So click on the brown haze and without releasing the button drag towards the apes head. You should notice the haze disappear. When done i cropped the image again to frame it a little better.

Due to the trickiness of this technique you will have mixed results. The fur makes this one more challenging than most. The result here is OK but would look a lot better had i got the shot right in the first place.

Here is another example of a bokeh i faked for someone and i think it had a much better result. The technique i used was exactly the same.

There you have it. Bokeh – how its achieved and how to fake it.