This tutorial should be translatable for newer versions of Photoshop. This tutorial is not dial-up friendly, as it utilizes example images to assist in understanding.

Tutorial: Using the selective coloring tool without abusing it.
Purpose: To help people understand the selective coloring tool and how to use it to enhance colors in your images.
Level: Beginner - detailed. Advanced Photoshop users may find this tutorial tedious.
Disclaimer: I am not proclaiming myself a Photoshop expert or graphics making God. This is simply written to help people learn to use a tool that has become very abused. I myself have abused it in the past and I've learned from my mistakes. :)


The first thing we need to do is be able to identify the selective coloring tool so that we can use it. There are two ways to use it - directly on the image itself:



or by making it a separate layer on top of the image we're working with:



I highly recommend that you stick to making it a new layer, so you don't alter the actual image especially if you somehow manage to make a mistake that you can't go back and correct. For the purpose of this tutorial, I will always be making the selective coloring on a new layer. Layers are your friend.

I'll start off with some badly abused uses of the selective coloring that have somehow managed to make it into mainstream iconing. All examples are made by me and, because he's so easy to abuse (and frequently done so by iconers) I'm going to use Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) - poor guy!

Bad examples of selective coloring:



What's wrong with these icons? First, people don't have sunburned lips normally or orange toned skin. Seriously! While it's nice to enhance colors such as the red of Rupert's hair or the blue of the background, you have to remember to take the entire icon into consideration. Bad uses of selective coloring can also cause an image to appear washed out, over sharpened and on occasion pixely (or appearing as though it were saved as a .gif).

So let's start off with this image of Ron on the train to Hogwarts. Although there are several ways to brighten an image, for the purpose of this tutorial, I am going to simply duplicate the layer by right clicking on it and choosing duplicate layer then in the layers window I am going to set it to screen. Here are the screenshots so you can do this:



This will give you some basic brightening:


Please note that I'm not making an icon here, I'm simply showing the use of the selective coloring tool so we won't be going through the steps of cropping or sharpening. You can do that on your own if you choose - you'll still be able to follow the steps of the tutorial. In your layers window, please make sure that you have the top most layer selected (that would be the layer you set to screen then go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Selective Color. It will bring up a pop-up box like this:



You can change the name of it if you like just leave the other settings as they are. When you click on OK to continue, it will bring up the selective coloring window:



A good thing to know is that you can alter multiple colors in your image with this one layer, or you can simply use this for just the reds and create a new selective coloring layer to handle other colors. If you accidentally close your Selective Color layer at anytime by hitting OK, you can can bring the window back up by double clicking on the outlined area on the image below:



Here are a list of colors that can be manipulated:


I'll start with REDS so we can bring out the color of Ron's hair. I want to express the importance of playing with settings - these settings are good for this image and if you choose to try this tutorial out on your own image, it's likely will not produce the same results. Taking out the cyan and adding magenta and yellow, it brings out the orange/red in Ron's hair - but also brings it out in his face:



I want to make Ron's skin tone more natural so I go to the WHITES setting and lower the settings on yellow and magenta until his skin tone looks a little more normal. The change is not dramatic, and that's ok, we just want to even out his skin:




Now, as you can see, Ron still looks like he's wearing lipstick. That might be ok for some strange fanfiction (you know it's out there - you just haven't come across it yet) so we're going to actually erase part of the selective color layer so that his lips aren't as enhanced as his hair is. On our layers list, the white highlighted area in the example below is called a mask. A mask is very hand to have, it allows you to erase out some of the parts of the selective color area that we don't want affected by our changes.



Now take your eraser tool and make your settings. Just a suggestion, when working with an area that you are going to erase on, enlarge the image so you you are only erasing on the area that you want to. It's easier to be more exact when the image is enlarged. My brush settings are below - this window is underneath your menu at the top of the screen. If for some reason you don't see it, go to Windows -> Options and make sure this is checked.



After enlarging my image (you can use the magnify tool or using Ctrl-Shift-+ shortcut to enlarge) I erased out the area above Ron's lips to get rid of the too-red coloring. The area inside the marquee is where I erased so you could see the difference in the natural coloring of his lips and the obnoxious lip-stick red (the image appears pixely because it is magnified by 300%).



As a reminder, you are erasing on the white mask area. When you finish erasing, it will leave the area black on the mask. If for some reason you make a mistake you can either step backwards (Ctrl-Shift-Z) or paint on the masked area in white and will revert back to its original state. You can continue erasing any other area that you feel might be too affected by the red as well.

(here is the masked area, blacked out where I erased)


Now, go back to your selective color options on the same layer you just erased on by double clicking on the layer thumbnail:


From the drop down list of colors, choose BLACKS. We're going to further enhance the image by adding a bit of contrast. I highly suggest spending a few moments playing with all the settings before continuing on, so you can see exactly what part of your image can be affected by changing the settings of the BLACKS in your image.

Now, I just want the blacks in my image to be more vividly black and not blackish/dark gray, so I set my blacks to +10%. We're not trying to darken the image so if you go much more than 10%, the image becomes too dark. Find the setting that works for your image if you're not using the one of Ron that I provided.





Lovely, no? Moving on. Go into the selective coloring options again and go to NEUTRALS. Just a warning here, a little bit goes a -long- way. I lowered the setting of my cyans by -5 to give Ron's face a little more neutral coloring. The coloring is subtle and enough of a chance that I'm happy with it. I cropped and resized my image to make the rest of the tutorial a little more compact (which also makes it look less grainy because it wasn't the highest quality image when we first started):

BEFORE:


AFTER:



Now for the blues. Go ahead and make a new Selective Color Layer the same way we did earlier, making sure that you have the top most layer in your layers list selected so the new layer becomes the top most layer (boy I hope that wasn't confusing). Here's a little screenshot to show you what I mean, I renamed my new layer "blues" so you could tell the difference:



Click on OK before making any changes to your new selective color layer. We're going to erase out Ron's image from this layer so it doesn't change the work we just put into enhancing him. Repeat the instructions above of erasing on the mask area to take Ron out of the new selective coloring layer. Here are the results:



Go back into the selective color options. Our background has a lot of blues in it so let's enhance them a bit to make them appear more bold!

First I went into the BLUES in my drop down and turned the magentas down to -100 to enhance the blue in the window. Then I went into my CYANS and turned the cyans up to +100 and the magentas to +50 to enhance the blue in the window some more. The last thing I did was went into my WHITES and turned the cyans, magentas and yellows down to -50 to adjust the coloring of the wall behind Ron. Here are the settings and the results:




I click on OK when I'm done with my adjustments and here is the before and after of the newest selective color adjustment layer. It enhanced the blue in the window and toned down the blues in the rest of the cap to make the walls appear more white:



Here are the changes from start to finish:




Now, please keep in mind that this tutorial is simply to enhance properly. There are many great icons out there that use selective coloring to make bright, vivid and interesting changes to images. Here are some other icons I've made where I've used selective coloring to enhance:

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A special thanks to xenylamine for teaching me not to be afraid of selective coloring and the benefit of using neutrals during this process. Hope this tutorial helps you. Feel free to leave comments or questions.