Photographers, hobbyists and other visual artists have many options for making their digital photographs stand out. From artistic filters and vector conversion programs that allow you to make line art out of your photographs to image editors that allow you to perform darkroom functions on your screen, there is a program out there for everyone. You can combine color and black and white elements on your photographs using some of these programs to help your subjects stand out and make a photographic statement.
Instructions
1. Try FotoFlexer, a free online digital photo editor. Using the advanced options in FotoFlexer's "Grayscale" effect, you can designate a specific area of your photograph to convert to black and white using an onscreen brush or by creating a resizable focal point. FotoFlexer also allows you to invert your selections so that the areas you convert to black and white are converted to color while the remaining areas are made black and white. You can also customize a fade area to make sure the transition between color and black and white areas of your photo is natural and soft.
2. Download a freeware application such as GIMP, which works on both PC and Mac computers and includes many of the functions and capabilities offered on expensive professional image-editing programs. You can mix color and black and white in your images in GIMP by creating a black and white duplicate layer over your original colored photograph and using GIMP's brush tools to erase the areas of the duplicate layer you want to appear in color.
3. Use a trial download version of a professional image-editing program such as Adobe Photoshop, which will allow you the greatest number of options for combining color and black and white options in your digital photographs. Using a combination of Photoshop's layer masking tools and black and white adjustment layers, you can create a combination photo that allows you to fully customize the grayscale dynamics of your black and white image areas while allowing you to adjust properties and exposure levels of the color areas. This program will also allow you to easily retain your original photograph for future use.
Tags: black white, color black, color black white, convert black, convert black white, digital photographs, duplicate layer
