Making certain things B&W

[emiles]

So here is what I want to do. I took a picture of the christmas lights in our room, and I want to make the rest of the picture black and white, but leave the color on the lights. Any idea how I could do that? I'm using Paint.net so I don't have to many fancy things to play with, I'm willing to give it a shot.

[jetrim]

Don't know much about the program but I see it does support layers, so maybe the easiest way is to put the same image on two layers, convert top layer to B&W then "erase" the lights, revealing the color on the layer below.

[GB1]

I haven't used Paint.net and am therefore not familiar with its tools and capabilities, but in general you need to "Desaturate" the areas you want B&W. Jet's approach is very organized. Another lazier approach is to do it all on the same layer (depends whether you think you'll use the image for more manipulations again in the future) and save it under another name.

In general, you want to use their masking tool (assuming it has one) and select the colored lights. If it has the capability, feather the mask a little to decrease the sharp transition. Then invert the mask so that it selects all except the lights (again, if it can do that), and desaturate.

G

[emiles]

Thanks a bunch guys. I'll look into both ways of doing it.

Eric