Selective coloring

How i wish we could all do it... Selective coloring.
Remove the colors of sorrow in life and fill it only with those colors that give us joy and unending
happiness.
I do remember while interacting with a senior person that Life itself is a Photoshop document. You keep making the actions and the canvas is filled with the events. The only difference is that in Life you do not have the option of Undo (CTRL+Z).


One would argue what are the colors that one can associate happiness with?
Whats a color of happiness in one culture may not be in another. As a designer do we need to be sensitive to such things? Many people say that India is a land of color ! and that its a photographer's paradise. But still we associate the black and white medium to sadness and mourning...
The conception generally is that Joy is present only when there is color. This may be true in most of the cases not all though!



Doing this Selective coloring is really simple.
1) Open the image on Photoshop. This is the 'Background Layer' in the opened document.
2) Copy the image layer onto another layer (this is the "Background Copy layer") so that both the layers are coinciding, and the images are just one below the other.
3) Convert this copy layer into Black and white. Using Image> Adjustment > Gradient Map. ( make sure that the image pallete in the menu toolbar has the colors Black in foreground and White in background.
4) Select the eraser tool and erase those parts of the image which you want in color from the Copied layer. Since the image on the lower layer still has the colored image, the desired effect is easily attained.




I just truly wish that i could do this with Life also!
Enjoy!