Photoshop Elements 7 has a Smart Brush tool that will give your image “one-click” effects. One of these effects is called “Reverse Saturation”, which allows you to selectively adjust saturation in parts of your image. The cheat below is a method for anyone to achieve the same effect regardless of the version of PSE that they own. The same process can be used for a selective black and white conversion, which everyone seems to like these days! Me included!
Create Selective Black & White or Selective Saturation Effects in Photoshop Elements
- Use the Selection tool of your choice to select the area of the image you don’t want to change.
- Invert your selection by going to the Select Menu and clicking on Inverse, or type Shift+Control+I. (I’m assuming here that the area you don’t want to change is smaller and easier to select than the area you do want to change. If not, select the area you do want to change and don’t invert it.)
- Add a Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer by clicking the half-black half-white circle near the top of the Layers Palette.
- Now, Adobe’s default setting for this effect is to increase the Saturation slider to 40. Here is an example – the bud was the part of the image I didn’t want to change, and the saturation of the rest of the image was increased to 40. This would be effective in some images, but it’s not here. You can see that the open flowers are a brighter pink than the bud, but the change isn’t that impressive.
PSE 7 Smart Brush Reverse Saturation Example
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I like this next version much better. Instead of increasing the saturation, I decreased it to about -50. It takes out most of the color from everything except the bud.
PSE 7 Smart Brush Reverse Saturation Effect Example
And the final version is a complete Selective Black & White conversion. Decrease the saturation all the way down to -100, and this is what you get:
- PSE 7 Smart Brush Selective Black & White Effect
Happy Photoshopping!
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