Selective saturation in Photoshop

Do you have a picture that would look good in black and white? Well, maybe you should try selective saturation to color parts of the black and white picture and give it a cool effect.

Step 1:

Open up your image that you would like to use to perform this selective saturation on. I searched on Google with the keyword: ‘Flowers’ and I found and will be using this picture as an example:

HoOlite.be Photoshop tutorial: Selective Saturation step1

Step 2:

Duplicate the layer (Ctrl + J) and go to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (Shift + Ctrl + U)

HoOlite.be Photoshop tutorial: Selective Saturation step2

Step 3:

Good, now we have our black and white picture, now we’re going for selective saturation.

Take out your erase tool, and start erasing on your black and white layer. Feel free to zoom in, this will make it a lot easier to focus more on details.

Now start erasing the parts on your flower you would like to have in color like the example below.

HoOlite.be Photoshop tutorial: Selective Saturation step3

And that’s basically it.

My final result.

HoOlite.be Photoshop tutorial: Selective Saturation final result

I’ve added some text and a border.

To have such text effect, enter your text in any color you like.

Then Ctrl+click on your text layer.

Now your text will be selected. Click on your Desaturated layer while your text is still selected and hit your Delete button on your keyboard.
Now you hide your text layer or just delete your text layer. And that’s it!

The font that I used is Scriptina.

Find more tutorials.

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9 Comments

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  • Why are you erasing the actual image instead of using a mask? Fixing mistakes with masks is much easier than relying only on CTRL-Z as you have to if you actually choose to destroy the top image instead of just masking it away.

    Reply
    • Hi, thank you for your reply. You’re absolutly right, no doubt about it. But, this tutorial is over 5 years old. At that time, I didn’t know any better. The tutorial is pretty outdated, I know.

      Reply
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    Reply

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