Hi there!  CT Member Kacy here with a tutorial on converting a photo to be both color / black and white using overlays.

Start by opening up the photo you want to work with.  I am using this photo of a myself and a lorikeet for this project.

With the background layer selected in the layers panel, press Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer.

With the copied layer selected convert this layer to a black and white photo (by whichever method you prefer – in a previous blog post I gave a tutorial on converting photos to black and white)

I want to highlight the cute and colorful lorikeet standing on my hand in this photo.  With the black and white layer selected, I am going to use the Magic Wand tool to select parts of the bird’s body and delete them from the black and white layer.

You may need to adjust your sample size and tolerances to be able to select the right amount of area to delete.

Or, if selecting areas on the black and white layer is not working very well, I sometimes turn the visibility of the black and white layer off, select the area to be deleted from the color layer/background layer with the Magic Wand, and then re-select the black and white layer to delete that portion of the photo.

Some of my most commonly used shortcuts:
– Undo, or Ctrl + Z is truly your best friend here.
– To undo more than one step, use Ctrl + Alt + Z.
– Ctrl + D is a helpful shortcut to de-select the area you were just working with.
– Holding down the shift key while selecting multiple areas with the Magic Wand tool helps to speed up the process a bit.
– don’t forget to zoom in to be able to see the fine details of the photo you are working with.

If you are feeling especially adventurous, you can always use the eraser tool!  I find that I’m doing more undoing than erasing sometimes…  Here is my little lorikeet buddy in color, with me in black and white.

To make the bird stand out just a bit more, I used an Iris blur to blur the area around the bird (Filter, Blur, Iris Blur).

Here is the final product!