It's Always Fun to Experiment

Today I am trying to learn different ways to make a photograph black and white but still leave a specific element of it in the original color.  Before anything else, I have to say that I am not using layers.  I don't know how.  Yeh I know, not good for a photographer, right?  Neither am I using photographs in RAW.   Why?  Well, so far, I haven't needed to do either one.  Every edited change I have made in any of my photographs have been done with an original JPEG file.  One day I hope to learn how to work with both RAW and layers, but that isn't today.

First a reminder that I am using Corel Paint Shop Photo Pro X5, or Paint Shop 15 as some prefer.  

Second, whenever I am attempting to try something new, I still find my way into experimentation with other things along the way.  

So, today, here is my step-by-step process.

Oh, another thing that is very important. These are not my photos.  They are my 12 year old granddaughter's photo.  She and I often work together as I am teaching her photography and as I learn new things, I show her too.

 

For this photo, I did not clear up the focus as I was merely attempting to see if I could remove all of the color except for the original color of the flower.  It worked somewhat, but it left the highlights in the black and white, or grey scale, rather than keeping them the original color.

For this next set, I cleaned up the focus of the original photo.  This time I wanted to try other options to see what would happen.  I am sure what I did on this one would have worked best using layers, as I never was able to come out with the original flower color.  But I did like the results just as they turned out.

 

 These next three results are interesting and show what happens when you separate the RBG color channels.  For these I stayed within the original Paint Shop 15 program, clicking on the Image tab.  Then I chose the Channel Splitter option and came up with these three photos at once.  

This one above was red.

This one above was green.

This one above was blue.


After this I tried several other filters still trying to come up with my desired results.  But as usual, I got distracted by the other experimental results as I tried the various filters.  I am still working with the Luminares filter group.  This first photo is Luminares: A Bit of Left Over Gradient.

Because I loved how these colors turned out, I wanted to do some other things.  All I did so far with this is to create several kaleidoscope variances from the Mehdi effects group.  These are the results.

I couldn't resist.  The colors are so beautiful.  I'm far from finished with learning how to change a photo from color to black and white while keeping one object in the photo the original color.  But for now, I'm being distracted by a dog that wants to go outside badly, and other family members wanting my attention.  Have a great day!  Or evening, whichever it may be for you where you live.