Selective Colouring

You know that little thing where you have a black and white photo with a splash of colour, well that's selective colouring. Until last year I didn't know what it was called or how to do it but thanks to some wonderful people at Photography Blog I learned how to. There are many ways in which to do this but I've found a free software programme called GIMP which allows you to do so and then a talk through guide at Create Blog which is easy to follow.

Here are some examples of what I've done. I've posted the original photo and then afterwards with the selective colouring.





This photo I did using a trial version of photoshop, it involves layers and you cutting out from the original colour photo the areas you wanted (in this case my nieces red top, the Union Jack on my nephew's trousers and the orange in the back of my son's shoe), then changing the photo to B&W, creating a new layer, pasting over the colouring bits and merging together, well I think that's how I did it, was so long ago. Very long winded and you need a very very very steady hand. Still I like how this turned out and to me gives an age old effect to the photo that makes it feel timeless.

Another photo I did (this time using GIMP) was this one.





The GIMP way was a lot lot lot easier to use and if you made a mistake easier to rectify.

I have other photos I've done, all can be seen in my flickr account which is linked to at the side. I just need to find other colours other than red to selective colour.