Photoshop: color photo pop!

A nice trick for action photos is to make the subject stand out by changing everything but the subject in to Black & White. This is accomplished relatively quickly by creating a mask that isolates the our subject the skater from the background.

Step 1: Start with an action image. The example uses a public domain image.

Step 2: Make a copy of the of the image layer. On this new layer, go Layer -–> Add Layer Mask -–> Reveal All. Take an appropriate size brush, and start painting over your subject. You may need to change the size of the brush as you work. For the subject’s fingers and shoes, a smaller brush was required for the edges. Alternately, you could mask everything besides the skater, but that would probably take longer.

Step 3: When you’re done masking, turn off the mask layer, go back to the original layer and to Image -–> Adjust -–> Desaturate. This will take all the color out of the original.

Step 4: Return to your mask layer, clicking on the mask thumbnail in the layers palette, and choose Image -–> Adjust–-> Invert. You are reversing your mask to be the exact opposite of what you brushed on to the subject. This hides everything in the layer except the subject. Now you should see something like this:

The colorful skater is on his own layer, and behind him is a fully Black and White version of the full image. If you want to make him really stand out, try Image -–> Adjust -–> Hue and Saturation, and fiddle with the controls. If we were really using this for image for something, we would probably make the skateboard pop with color as well.