With the holidays having just passed, we wanted to show you some ideas to help spice up your holiday photos. As a proud parent of two little boys (3 and 1) I can vouch for the many child pictures that parents take. This tip will show you a classic effect to apply to a baby picture (or a picture of anyone for that matter) that will set your family’s photos apart from the masses.

Step One:
1. First, open a photograph to use for this technique. Photos in which you can imagine a specific area of color surrounded by black and white work well for this technique. In this example, I’m using a photograph from Istockphoto.com. You can download a comp of the photograph from their website in case you’d like to follow along. At this point, you should only have 1 layer in your layers palette.

Step Two:Next, we need to remove the color from the photograph. Do this by clicking on the Create Adjustment Layer icon at the top of the Layers palette. Choose the Hue/Saturation option from the list.

Step Three: Enter the following settings into the dialog box and click OK. Adjustment layers are a wonderful feature in Elements. They allow you to apply non-destructive effects to your images. By double clicking on the adjustment layer in the layers palette you can go back and change the settings at any point.

Step Four: Your layers palette should now look similar to this.

Step Five: All that remains is to paint back in the color of the Santa hat. First, select the Brush Tool. In the options bar select the 35 px round soft edged brush.

Step Six: Press D to set your set your foreground color to black. Click on the adjustment layer to make it active and begin painting on the red area of the Santa hat. Notice that wherever you paint the red color is being returned to the photograph. Basically, you’re telling Elements to not apply the Hue/Saturation adjustment to the areas in black. Essentially, the color black is revealing whatever is beneath the adjustment layer – in this case, the color photograph.

Step Seven: If you find you’ve painted too much black in an area you didn’t want to, just switch your foreground color to white and paint the adjustment layer back in.

TIP: If you find you need to adjust the size of your brush to get more detailed results just use the bracket keys ([ ] ). These will allow you to change the size of the brush without moving the mouse from the area in which you’re painting.

Step Eight: That’s it! You’ve not only applied a classic effect to your photos but you’ve done it non-destructively. This means that you can save this image as a PSD file, open it up at a later date and change the color settings or even remove the adjustment layer altogether if you choose. Very powerful!

I hope you enjoyed this tip. Please visit the forums to discuss this effect and mingle with other Elements users.

Happy Photoshopping!