Partial Desaturate in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will learn how to perform partial desaturating to an image. This means some parts of the image will remain black and white and other part will be in colour. You will need to use the quick mask tool for this tutorial, but you can also use the pen tool if you wish.


Partial Desaturate

Step 1

Open an image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer (Ctrl + J). Then reset the colour palette by pressing the ‘D’ key.

Step 2

Select the Quick mask tool and hit the ‘Q’ key on the keyboard to enter quick mask mode. Now paint over the areas of the image where you don’t want the black and white effect to appear. Note that this is the opposite way around. If you make a mistake you can use the eraser tool.

Step 3

Exit Quick mask mode by selecting the ‘Q’ key again. Then choose Select > Inverse and your image should look like below:

Step 4

Now select Image > Adjustment > Desaturate and deselect the selection (Ctrl + D) and your image should look like below.