Black & White pics with Bits of Color

I have always loved photographs that are in black & white. When I first saw pictures that had little bits of color in with the black & white, I was just amazed. It was love at first sight. I had no clue how easy it really is to do myself until I got Photoshop, and just started playing around...

I love this picture of my daughter holding my Mom's hand, but I thought it might be even more interesting if I did it in black & white except for the dress.

Sure enough! It really 'popped' her dress, and took the focus totally in to her.

How is this done? Super easy:

I just took the original picture and duplicated the layer. I then took the duplicated layer (the one on top) and desaturated it (in other words, turned it into black & white). I then used the magic wand tool to trace around Livia's dress (I feathered it to about 10 px, I believe) Once the dress was all selected, I just hit the delete button - it took away the desaturated layer & I was left with a cute little color dress against the black & white. To finish it up, I flattened the image & saved it as a copy (I always keep all my originals, no matter how silly that is!)

I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but just through playing around, I figured this one out - and I really like it. That's the cool thing about Photoshop: there's rarely just one right way to do something. And 'easiest' to someone can be more difficult for another. To each his or her own
:o)