Focal black and white help

divamum

Ok.

So I have a photo where I'd like to keep TWO small areas in colour, but convert the rest to black and white.

Picasa has a "focal black and white" selection but 1. It will only let you choose one area to keep in colour, and 2. you can't adjust the shape of the colour point, so it spills over to where I DON'T want it.

I have tried and tried and tried to do this in Paintshop with everything I can think of, but I'm clearly missing something.

I have tried copying the section in colour and then pasting it into another copy - no go, it turns black and white in the destination copy (which was already converted, of course).

I have tried groping around with layers by using copy/paste to make a separate layer (1 with one focal ccolour point, and a 2nd with the other) and then merging them, but one always seems to take precdence and I still only get ONE area in colour in the final merge (granted, my layers comprehension is still NIL, so I'm still guessing how to use them and may be missing something very basic and very obvious).

I have tried doing a mask layer, but no matter what area I select as a smaller section, nothing seems to really happen. (see comment above - clueeeellllesss about layers, and because I'm using Paintshop instead of Photoshop the tutorial in here actually confuses me more)

I have tried copying and pasting just the small selection I want, but as soon as I paste it into the BW destination file it (you guessed it!) turns bw.

Feeling very clueless and all I want to do is keep two pink socks pink and the rest B&W!

If there is a tutorial or thread which discusses this, by all means point me to it (I did search, but nothing obvious came up).

Thanks in advance!

divamum

Ok, I finally (after about an hour of trying!) came up with a way of doing it, but i feel SURE there's a more efficient method!

I used Picasa to keep a larger area than I wanted coloured, then isolated the outer edges I DON'T want in colour (lasso/freehand) and using the "colorize" selection took it down to zero.

But I can imagine this wouldn't work in all situations; it's only because the two areas are close that I got away with it, so all comments and tips appreciated!

ziggy53

Here is a video tutorial that may give you some ideas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cULnU9aelaU

Do remember to just desaturate the base layer but don't change it to grayscale.