This is my second Photoshop tutorial on Boddunan. In the first tutorial I covered some basic things one can do with Photoshop. You can read the article here – Photoshop tutorial: Getting started with the basics. Anyway, this tutorial is of a different style. While writing the first tutorial I thought of a brick by brick approach in which I’ll follow a certain course. But now I think I’ll cover some other interesting and simple techniques as well, in between this course, which can easily be followed by a beginner.

With this in mind I’ve written my second tutorial here in which I’ll show you how to highlight a particular colour in Photoshop. This is a simple technique and all you have to do is to follow the instructions carefully. 

Output

 First I want to show you what we're creating here. So let's have a look at the source file and the output file I've created before we go into the tutorial.

1. Selecting an image

Now this is an important part. It’s recommended that you select an image in which there’s a bright color. Colors like red, green, orange etc. will look great for this technique. For this tutorial I’ve selected a picture of a football player (Wayne Rooney, if you’re interested!) in his red jersey.

2. Selecting the red color with Magic Wand tool

You’ll find a tool with this icon  in your toolbar with the name ‘Magic Wand Tool’. This is a handy tool which lets you select a portion of an image based on the color. For example, if you select the magic wand tool and click on the red color of an image then the entire red colored portion gets selected, as shown in the image below. The entire red color may not be selected with just one click with the Magic Wand tool. So you should right click the non selected portions you want to highlight and click 'Add to Selection'. Alternatively, you can hold the Shift key on your keyboard, with Magic Wand tool selected and then click on the non selected portions. Once you've made the entire selection it will look like this,

Now if you want to add a little more redness to the selected red you can go to Image > Adjustments > Color Balance (Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+B) and from the box that appears move the slider towards ‘Red’.

You can also find Vibrance in the Adjustments option, which will increase the vibrance of the color.

Once done with that, with the Magic Wand Tool selected, you should right click on the image and select ‘Select inverse’.

3. Adjusting Hue/Saturation

 Once you’ve selected the ‘Select inverse’, you’ll see that portion except the color you want to highlight is been selected. Now go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl+U) and from the box appeared slide the Saturation slider to the left side (to negative value). I’d recommend not sliding it to the end and getting a black and white background. Rather it’s better to have a dim colored background when you highlight a color as shown below.

Now you've got the result you're looking for. Go to Save and select the file type as JPEG if you want an image file.

There’s a lot more fun you can have with Magic Wand tool. Just select some color and go to the Image option and Filter gallery and you may create some stunning effects. You can also apply some brushes and tools like blur tool, burn tool etc. on selected regions to get cool looks (I guess I may also write on this topic in future since there’s a lot of potential for each Photoshop tool)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial. I’ll be covering some basic things in the next tutorial which will be a kind of continuation of my first tutorial. If you have any opinions, idead, questions or comments make sure you put them in the comments below.

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