Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual

Photoshop lets you easily convert a color image to black-and-white without harming the original image. First, create a Black & White Adjustment layer by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel, and then choose Black & White. Tweak the various sliders in the resulting Adjustments panel for maximum contrast, and then add a color overlay by clicking the Tint checkbox at the top of the panel. Photoshop assumes you want to give your image a brown (sepia) tint. To use another color, click the little brown color swatch to the right of the Tint checkbox and pick a new color from the resulting Color Picker.

2. Partial color effect.

To really draw viewer's eyes to the focal point of your image, make the focal point colored and the rest of the image black-and-white. By using the layer mask that tags along with each Adjustment layer, you can hide the effect of a Black & White Adjustment layer and bring back the original color. (Think of a layer mask as digital masking tape.) To create this effect, add an Adjustment layer by clicking the half-black/half-white circle at the bottom of the Layers palette, and then choose Black & White. Tweak the sliders for maximum contrast, and then, on the Layers panel, click once to select the Adjustment layer's mask (the white thumbnail to the right of the layer thumbnail). Press B to grab the Brush tool and, at the bottom of Tools panel, set the foreground color chip to black. (In the realm of the layer mask, painting with black conceals and painting with white reveals.) Next, mouse over to your document and use the Brush tool to paint over any area you want to bring back its original color. If you bring back too much color, press X to flip-flop your color chips so you're painting with white, and then paint that area to make it black and white again.

You can make Photoshop add a soft, darkened edge around any photo in seconds...if you know which filter to reach for. Choose Filter > Distort > Lens Correction, then grab the Vignette slider and drag it all the way to the left. To darken the edge color even more, grab the Midpoint slider and drag it slightly to the left. Click OK and you're finished!

If you want to add a colorful background to a photo that has a white background, don't waste time creating a selection to delete the background or hide it with a layer mask. Instead, swap backgrounds with the flick of a layer blend mode (blend modes change the way color on one layer interacts with the color on other layers). Simply place the colorful background at the top of your layers stack and use the pop-up menu at the top of the Layers panel to change that layer's blend mode to Darken. Like magic, wherever the two layers intersect, only the darkest colors will remain. If necessary, you can use a layer mask to hide parts of the new background, as shown here.

Photoshop CS4 gives you a quick new way to make the colors in your image pop without harming the original image. It's called the Vibrance Adjustment layer, and you can find it on the right side of your screen in the new Adjustments panel (or by clicking the half black/half white circle at the bottom of your Layers panel). Once you've created the Vibrance Adjustment layer, drag the Vibrance slider all the way to the right, and it intensifies the colors in your image. Happily, it has less of an effect on bright colors (because they're already highly saturated) than on lighter tones, yet it leaves skin tones relatively unchanged.