Traditional Photographic Techniques: Creative Desaturation

Adapted from Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers (Focal Press)
By Christopher Grey

Dateline: March 1, 2007
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While Photoshop is terrific for spicing up image color, it also offers a few tricks for spicing it down. However, if you use just the Desaturate tool (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate), the best you’ll get is a basic grayscale image, as there are no degrees of adjustment with that tool. Useful, but not terribly versatile.

Working the Saturation slider at Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation to the left will gradually desaturate the image until all that is left is the same basic grayscale image.

You can also desaturate any selected color. This is especially useful if you’d like or need to change the color balance of an image and want more control than with Variations and less trial and error than with Color Balance.

Let’s say we need to give an image the look of “Sweet Light”—that magical color that appears just at sunset and only lasts a few minutes. Sweet Light varies in color, depending on a number of atmospheric factors, from warm yellow-orange to dusky rose.

Open your image and duplicate the layer.

From the Toolbox, select the Color Picker and find a color you like. I’ve chosen F67B7B, a rich pink.

Fill the new layer with the chosen color (Edit > Fill). The Blending Mode should be Color.

Use the Layer Opacity slider to desaturate this color until you like it.

Flatten and Save. The final image is both subtle and robust.

For those of you who shoot architectural or travel images, this method can make a good image great. For this shot I filled the duplicate layer with F5822E, a golden orange.

Photoshop introduced a new Image > Adjustments device in version CS, Photo Filter, which is designed to mimic the effects of glass camera filters. Its most useful filters are the warming and cooling filters, which act much like the old standards.

If you’re working with a previous version of Photoshop, use the following colors as guides. To warm up your image, with color similar to the 85 filter series, use EC8A00. For a more subtle look, like the 81 series, use EBB113.

To cool an image, use 006DFF to match the 80 series, 005B5FF to match the 82 series. Another cooling filter, the LBB series, can be replicated with 005DFF.

Photo Filter hosts a number of other colors to choose from as well. I’ll leave it to you to determine their value to your work.

For many photographers, images that are both color and black and white have become a staple product. They’re easy to do with Photoshop; here’s how.

Open your selected image and duplicate the layer.

Desaturate the new layer (Image > Adjustments > Desaturate).

Use a white Layer Mask to mask through the desaturated layer to the full color layer below. The selection mask for this image was created with the Polygonal Lasso, then filled with black (Edit > Fill) to see through to the layer below.

Method Two
Open the selected image. Using the Elliptical Marquee, the Rectangular Marquee, or the Lasso tool, draw the appropriate shape. Move it into position, if necessary.

Use Select > Inverse to work in the area outside of the drawn shape.

Use Select > Feather and set a Feather Radius you like. Larger numbers mean a more gradual transition.

Optional
Instead of Desaturating in the previous step, fill the area with black, white, or any color from the Color Picker. For this example, I’ve selected a color from the background. To blend the two layers I’ve reduced the Layer Opacity of the working layer to 60%.

If you would like to see the effect of other Blending Modes (which can be very dramatic) first use Select > Inverse to catch the inside of your shape, then Edit > Clear to eliminate those pixels (you’ll see through to the layer below and it may look like nothing happened). Do Select > Inverse again to be certain that any additional steps will be applied to the outside of the shape. This example’s Blending Mode was Vivid Light.

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Printed with permission from Focal Press, a division of Elsevier. Copyright 2007. Photoshop Effects for Portrait Photographers by Christopher Grey. For more information on this title and other similar books, please visit www.focalpress.com.