Creating Color Pops

Color Pops are a very trendy and frequently a not difficult photo editing effect. I'll describe the method that will work for Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Before we get started it's important to understand a little about layers. Most photo editors, except very simple ones and strangely enough Photoshop Lightroom, support layers. You can imagine a layer as a photograph. Now lay on top of that photograph another one. Can you see the photo on the bottom? No, you can't see through this layer. In a photo editor, however, we can adjust the opacity of that top photo anywhere from 0% to 100%. Right now it is at 100% and nothing shows through. If we cut a hole in this layer we can see through the hole and see the photo below and that is exactly how we will create a Color Pop.

In the photo selected for this Pop we have three kids carrying balloons away from an outdoor birthday party. The photo we start with is in color, a Color Pop, as usually created, is a color image converted to  black & white. Some of the image, however, is left in color ... the "Pop". In this photo we'll leave the balloons in color and the rest of the image will be in black & white. We will do this first int the easiest way to understand and then we'll do it again in a way that's actually easier to do but has another step of understanding.
Before we go any further let's crop this shot down to the three kids and a little woods. OK, that's better, we didn't need all those cars and building and stuff, so let's get to work.

The "easy way". Using either Photoshop or Elements, Ctrl-J creates a second copy of the current layer. Now we have two copies of the same photo laying on top of each other. We see only the top copy now. The next step is to change the top image into a black & white image. Both Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have several ways to change a color image to black & white. That should be the topic of another post, or maybe several. For now let's do a basic change. In Photoshop Elements, from the menus, choose Enhance>Convert to Black and White. There are adjustments we can make at this point but as I mentioned, more posts later, right now clicking OK will create a serviceable monochrome image for our purposes. In Photoshop select from the menu Image>Adjustments>Black & White and click OK. There is an Auto button you can try if you like. In either case my Layers pallet looks like the one above, showing a Background layer in color and a Layer 1 (or Background Copy) in black and white. Remembering the description of how layers work, since the black and white layer is on top, that is all we see, but if we cut holes in that layer where the balloons are we will be able to see the balloons in color and we will have created a "Color Pop".

In the tool bar I've selected the Eraser Tool (or just press the letter E on the key board), I adjust the size of the Eraser Tool using the [ and ] keys until it is just a little smaller than one of the balloons. Carefully line it up with a balloon and click. And we now have a colored balloon and have created a "Color Pop". The balloon has a little grey edge so I click on it again and this time move the mouse around a little to cover the rest of the grey area.

I said I would cover two ways of doing this because this way if you erase too much in Elements you can keep pressing Undo (or Ctrl-Z) until you get back to before your mistake but in Photoshop you'll have to use the History Pallet and we don't want to go there now, so lets do this another way.

I click on the tiny Black and White thumb nail to be sure that layer is selected and, at the bottom of the layer pallet find the little rectangle symbol with a circle in the middle of it. Click that and along side your black and white image will be a white rectangle. This is a layer mask. Since I've just created the mask it is now selected. When the layer mask is selected the foreground/background colors at the bottom of the tool bar reset themselves to black and white. (they may have already been set that way but if not, they are now). I select the brush tool by typing "B", set it to a size I like with the [ and ] keys and begin painting over the balloons. The balloons change to color when I look at the small Layer Mask in the Layer Pallet I see black dots. When the Mask is selected and I paint I'm actually painting on the Mask. Anywhere I paint black the layer becomes transparent and shows the layer below it (in this case the color layer). This way if I make a mistake and paint outside the balloon I type the letter "X" and the brush changes to white and I paint over the black that is in the wrong place. Pressing the letter "X" changes the foreground/background colors and I can keep painting until I get it right. and I finally did. Here it is.