After so many lovely comments on my last post I thought I would provide a quick tutorial today to help those of you who fancy learning how to do some photo editing and are looking to get to grips with some of the basics of Photoshop.

For the examples shown in this tutorial I have been using Photoshop CS4 but you can do exactly the same thing in Photoshop Elements.

It is quite popular at the moment to take a colour photo and edit parts of it to be in black and white leaving a few key elements in colour. This can create a dramatic effect particularly in wedding photographs and photos of children.

What about the photos you have that are already in black and white? Is it possible to do the opposite and start with a black and white photo and add some colour to it? The answer is yes! There are in fact many ways of adding colour to a black and white photograph, it is impossible to 'restore' colour to a photo that has always been black and white but you can add colour and either create a dramatic effect or stick to the realistic colours as closely as you can. This is a basic tutorial that will get you started and perhaps introduce some of you to the use of layers within photo editing. 

To begin with open the black and white photograph you would like to use for this tutorial, it is a good idea to rename it and save it to make sure you don't by accident damage the original photo. 


Once you have done this you need to select the eyes using the lasso tool in the left hand tool bar. Simply click around the outline of the eyes to select them. When done you should have a blinking dotted line around each eye.

Now go up to the menu bar and select  Edit>Copy

At this stage you need to create a new layer, to do this look at the Layers panel at the bottom right hand side of the screen. At the moment you will just have one layer showing which will be named 'Background'. To create a new layer simply click on the second button from the right which looks a little like a page being peeled over (highlighted in pink in the picture to the left here). 
When you hover you mouse over this button the words 'Create a New Layer' will appear, click the button and you will see a new layer called 'Layer 1' will have appeared above the 'Background' layer. 

With this new layer selected now go to the menu bar and select Edit>Paste.

This has created a copy of just the eye section of your image.
 To add some colour to the eyes we now select Image > Adjustments > Colour Balance and change the settings to achieve the colour you desire. Once you are happy with the colour select OK.

This is our final image, I have made the eyes quite a striking blue here to show the results clearly but you can of course create a much more natural effect.

You can select any section of the image and do the same to add some colour to the image. 


In my next tutorial we will take a look at layers a little further and I will explain what the purpose is and how they work.

Please take a look at my other Tutorials for more tips for beginners:

Photoshop Tip 1: Object Removal
Photoshop Tip 2: How to create a Photo Collage
Photoshop Tip 3: How to create a Rainbow

If you would like your photographs editing but don't fancy doing it yourself take a look at
what editing services we offer, or feel free to contact us if there is something specific 
you would like doing.