In this video tutorial, we are going to be talking about one of the new Fill Adjustment Layers introduced into Photoshop’s CS3. So the first thing I am going to do is deduct layers from these areas so that you can see what I am talking about. I have just open up a regular color image that is basically in complementary colors. And this is probably the most ideal type of image to demonstrate this effect.

First we are going to click on the Create New Fill Adjustment icon at the bottom at the layers pallet. That is at black and white circle and come down to black and white. And this is going to open up the black and white dialogue box here. And there are several presets that you can choose from here.

Normally the green filter is going to give you a contrast the image. Lights are going to get lighter, the darks are going to get darker but you can experiment with other presets in here. There is an infrared preset. A high contrast blue filter which brings out the freckles and lightens that pink shirt, a high contrast red which would not be good in this instance but I am just going to leave it on none just a regular black and white. Because object of this tutorial is to show you a neat new effect that you can get using the black and white adjustment.

Before I click out of here I want also to mention that you can do tinting by clicking the tint box. And dial in a particular hue or saturation to get nice sepia tones or brown tones or your images as well as various monochromatic color tones. I am going to take that off and just click OK.

So in the layers pallet here we have got this black and white adjustment layer above this image and we are going to change the blending mode of it to one of the new blending modes that is in Photoshop CS3, called Darker Color. So I am going to click on that and then I am going to double click on the thumbnail of the black and white adjustment to open up the dialogue box again. And when you have a black and white over a color image and you put in darken mode, you can selectively push certain colors to be black and white and others will remain in color.

So for example, I want the magenta’s too pop or be permanent but I want these skin tones to back off to be more black and white. And since this is in darken mode. What I want to be black and white I am going to push their sliders to the left a little bit. Skin is comprised with red and yellow. So I am going to push that down. And I want the blues to pop up for the background so I am going to take these sliders and move them all the way to the right. The cyan and the blue and so I have effectively and quickly made a selective colorization of this image here. I will take that down a little bit and yellows so you have got a selective colorization here.

Now I am going to click OK on this because there is another new blending mode in Photoshop that also works with this type of method but before I go there. I am also going to show you that you can also experiment with some of these other blending modes in the darken area. Multiply etcetera, gives you a different type of effect. Blending modes and adjustment layers are wonderful.

And I am going to change this now instead of to darker color to one of the new ones called lighter color. And it gives you a whole different flip. And I can go back in here, double click on it and in this instance if I wanted the skin tones to be black and white since I am in the lighter mode then I would take those up a bit. Get black and white. I still do not want to loose the detail of that face. Some of the yellow up maybe a little bit more than the red trying knock out those skin tones. Get some detail back with the reds.

And then I want the shirt to show up. So in this instance because it is in lighter mode, I need to move that all the way to the left and make it darker. And if I want the blue background to show up while the blending mode is enlighten, I am going to take this and move it all the way to the left and move the cyan all the way to the left. And we also have this type of effect.

Now in this mode I have not found that using like screen or the other ones are as nice as working with the darker color modes but nonetheless it is an interesting way to play around with this really cool new Adjustment Layer and Photoshop of this back down to lighter color there we have it.

Here is a couple of extra little tips for this particular technique using the black and white filter to selectively colorize parts of your image. Often times you are maybe some little remnants of color. If we zoom in here on the lips you can see little speckles. And the quick way to get rid of that is to just create a new blank layer on the top and I am just going to name it this a traits, paint. And I am just going to grab a brush from the toolbox and you can paint with either black, white or neutral shade of gray. And I am just going to click over here like this. And it is fixed. Well not quite. We have just had to change the blending mode of that paint layer to color.

And now those little red specks have disappeared. So painting on a blank layer that is in color mode with black, white or gray is basically going to desaturate color areas of the image. Now if you want to make this pop a little bit more add a hue and saturation adjustment layer to the very top and bump up your saturation to give it more of a vibrant appearance and click OK. And that is it for some extra tips on this particular technique.