Several people have asked how I produced the ‘Lady in Red’ photos recently posted to my Instagram account.

Here are the steps I use in Photoshop.

1. Choose a photo that will convert well to black and white but which has a small area of a vibrant colour that you can bring back. Bright warm colours generally work best i.e. reds and oranges. Good subjects that work well are a bright red vehicle, red rose, red dress etc.
   

   El Santuario de Nuestra Señora de la Solidad (The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Solitude), Tlaquepaque, Mexico

2. Open the image in Photoshop and create a black and white adjustment layer
   
3. With the new adjustment layer active you will now see a black and white version of your image
4.  Select the Eraser tool (This may be hidden behind other eraser tools)
   

   Select the eraser tool

5. Use a suitable sized brush with a fairly hard edge and carefully paint away the top layer revealing the colour underneath. It helps to zoom in on the area you are working on. If you have a pressure sensitive tablet it makes this much easier than using the mouse
   

   Paint away to reveal the layer beneath

6. Now flatten the image into a single layer )Layer-Flatten image

And that’s all there is to it!

Lady in red