Tutorial: Change Part of a Picture to B&W - Photoshop Elements

In my December Daily - Day 14 layout I used a picture I adjusted in Photoshop Elements from color to black and white. I only changed the background but left my nephew in color which is a little bit trickier.

I'm going to show you how you can easily do this in Photoshop Elements. Right now I'm using Elements 12.0. but I know this will work in 9.0 as well and likely everything in between.

First you start with your color image.

First things first. We need to highlight my nephew and only my nephew because I want to turn everyone else black and white.

I use the magnetic lasso tool. It looks like this and is in the Select section of the Tools (circled in white below.)

There are 3 different lassos: 1. Lasso 2. Magnetic Lasso and 3. Polygonal Lasso. You want the magnetic lasso. It is very handy for selecting areas of a photo that have complex edges as is the case here. My nephew is surrounded by tons of kiddos and no distinct background.

First thing I like to do is zoom in on the area that I will be lasso'ing. I find that it's easier when the image is zoomed in and I can see where I'm drawing the lasso. It''s up close and personal.

To start, single click where you want to start the lasso. Then move your mouse around the object as close to the line as possible. The lasso will automatically select the edge (in this case my nephews shirt and body) as you go.

Note: When you get to areas where the contrast is less (where my nephew's hair intersects with the little girls' black dress - the contrast is low). Move slower and click your left mouse button as you go around the difficult section.

Then I start on one end and work my way around. In this case I started at the bottom left end of his shirt and worked my way around the left side around his head and down the right side. When you meet up with where you started you should see the line you made moving around the area. (I've heard it called "the moving ant line")

Next step is to Inverse Select your area. Click Select on the tool bar then click on Inverse. This will select everything else but the object you just lasso'd. In this case, all the other kiddos minus my nephew.

Now you will convert the image to black and white. You can do this several different ways. The easiest is to use the built in conversion tool with Photoshop.