butteredsausage

This isn't the image I am going to end up doing but this example will work I think.
I want to do something like Sin City. I have an image I want in monochrome, but have only the color I want showing.
If you didn't see Sin City, the movie was in black and white, but everything you can see red. Is this a simple enough procedure? I can make the picture monochrome or red, but I cant do what I want to do. Any help/ideas?
The picture I attached is just a lady in a red dress. I want to only have the red of her dress in color.

Thank you.

MindBender

Duplicate the picture on a new layer. Make it grayscale using your favorite grayscale technique. Apply a layer mask to the layer and mask out the dress. Voila.

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butteredsausage

I think I did it right. I had the gray picture on top, masked out the dress, then cleared the selection. Then, I had to put the other layer on top. Is that right?

MindBender

Not sure what exactly you did by the explanation... but since it worked for you... yes... that's right.

ronmatt

If you study Frank Millers work, I think you'll find that the 'reds' you mention are either separated out of high contrast single or multi-level black and white posterizations on a 2nd layer or done by hand or both. Sort of like the attached.

Gaussian

Add a Hue & Saturation adjustment layer, bring down saturation and change the mask;

- it cuts the file size almost in half
- most of the changes to the original image only have to be done to a single layer

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