Some of you ask me how I do this.

Since I decided to make some photoshop tutorials to share with you what I know, I’ll make this top of the list.

For your convenient, I’ve provided exactly the same photo for you to follow.

As with most thing in Photoshop, there are thousand ways to do exactly the same thing. I believe this is the simplest and quickest way to apply this partial colour technique.

Step 1
Open up the photo (or any photo you wish to edit)

Step 2
Move down to the bottom of the Layers Palette and click the half black/half white circle. This will create an Adjustment Layer (on a new layer). Choose Hue/Saturation.

Step 3
Drag the Saturation slider to the far left or simply key in -100. This will “drain” all colour. Click OK.

Step 4
Press D to restore default background and foreground colour, which is black and white. Press X to switch between background and foreground colour, until you see black is on top as shown in the following photo.

Now press B to select the Brush tool, you could choose any brush size you want, for example, you might want to use a small brush size for fine tuning.

Step 5
Now this is the most important part, let’s bring back the colour! And be patient, it could take a while to do this.

Go back to the photo and start painting. Let’s begin with the sweet girl’s face? Now you see the colour has been brought back. Good job, I know you can do it.

Zoom in to brush fine area, her hair for instance.

Photoshop TIPS:
CTRL + + to zoom in, CTRL + - to zoom out.
Right bracket key, ], to up the brush size.
Left bracket key, [, to bring the brush size down.

Another Tips
Accidentally brush the area you didn’t mean to?
No worries, press X again to swap White to the front (Black to the back, of course) and paint the area back out. Don’t forget to press X again to swap it back. So, Black on top to bring out the colour, White on top to send away the colour.

When you finished, you should see your layer mask something like this.

Correct me in my blog if I made a mistake.

Enjoy!