AnneMFletcher

what am I doing wrong here? everytime I try to add a color image to a background image that I set to greyscale, the color image turns grey also. I've Googles myself to death over this but can't seem to find the solution. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bacardi

The background decides, and when you set to greyscale, you can't add colour as there is no place to store colour info in, in other words: no channels.

To get the effect you look for, you have to set your greyscale image to RGB mode. That way you have three copntainers/channels available. One for Red, one for Green and one for Blue. Because it is a grey imagen, these three channels will be identical (grey only means that the values of R, G and B are the same, ie: 128, 128, 128).
If you add a coloured image on a new layer unto this, it will be coloured.

dubya

Another method to achieve the effect you are aiming at is to forego converting your image to Grayscale at all. Choose the layer that you want to be grayscale (in this case your background) and choose Image>Adjust>Desaturate.

Your image will remain in RGB mode (needed to display color), but Photoshop will remove all color from the desaturated layer, making it appear to be grayscale.

Dub

AnneMFletcher

Erik, dubya:

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I used the desaturate option and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately, I lost my work of the color photo because I didn't save it when I removed a pole that was in the picture but I'm going with another one instead. I will post my work in progress when I start getting somewhere on it. Stick around, I may have another one for you guys.