While at my buddy’s wedding in Wisconsin, my wife took some great pics and I’ve started to mess around with the creative touches in Photoshop.  I ran across a super easy way to give your pictures a little pop by making them black and white except for select areas that you want to keep color! Check out the picture below:

So here is the basic tutorial for all you newbie Photoshop users:
1. Duplicate the layer:

2. On the duplicated layer go to Image>Mode>Grayscale. (Do your color correcting before you turn the pic to black and white for best results)

3. Now here’s the easy part: Select the Eraser tool and simply erase the Grayscale layer wherever you want to see color! The background layer will show through as color. Use the [ and ] keys to control the size of the eraser to make sure you get fine detail and don’t erase anything that you didn’t want to.

Bonus: Now let’s say that you want to make the background a littled blurred and out of focus so as to draw more attention to your subject:

5. Duplicate your top layer and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Adjust the radius to about 1.4 pixels. If you really want the artsy look, raise the pixels to something like 7px.

6. Now get out your eraser tool again and you can simply erase the main subject that you want to keep in focus. All you’re really doing is revealing the layer underneath again!

That was a super simple technique, yet it can really make your images look great. Keep on the lookout for more tips coming from a new design and web development firm – AO Studios.