Removing and Adding Color - Photoshop Elements 13: The Missing Manual - page 549

1. Open a photo in Expert mode, and then activate the Smart Brush .
Press F or click its icon (the housepainter's brush) in the Tools panel. Check the Tool
Options to be sure you have the regular Smart Brush activated and not the Detail
Smart Brush (the pointier brush icon).
Happily, the Smart Brush puts its changes on their own layer, so you don't need to
create a duplicate layer before using it.
2. Choose the style of black-and-white conversion you want .
The thumbnail in the Tool Options area is actually the pop-out menu for the Smart
Brush's presets. Click the thumbnail and then, in the panel that appears, click the
drop-down menu and choose “Black and White.”
Elements offers a number of different conversion styles, and the names don't mean
much, so it's best to go by the thumbnail preview when choosing one. To make the
thumbnails a little easier to see, click the four-line square in the panel's upper right
and choose Large Thumbnail. Then click the thumbnail that looks most like what you
want (if you don't like it once it's applied, you can change it as explained in a sec).
3. In your photo, drag over the object that you want to make black and white .
The Smart Brush should select the object and convert it, all in one go. If you have a
hard time getting a good selection, go back to the Tool Options area and switch to the
Detail Smart Brush ( Correcting Part of an Image ) instead. It works like the regular
Selection Brush, changing only the area directly under the cursor, so you'll have more
work to do, but you'll get a more accurate selection.
That's all there is to it. If you don't like the conversion style you chose or want to change the
area the brush affects, click the pin icon that appears in your photo anytime the Smart Brush
is active, and then make your changes, like selecting a different thumbnail. (See Correcting
Color with a Brush for more about how to fine-tune Smart Brush edits.) You can also adjust
the affected area by editing the Smart Brush's layer mask, as explained on Correcting Color
with a Brush .
The Smart Brush is great when you want a photo that's mostly in color with only a small area
of black and white. If you want the opposite—a photo that's mostly black and white with
only a small area of color, like the puppy in Figure 10-4 —then turn on the Tool Options
area's Inverse checkbox (which reverses the area changed by the effect), and then brush over
the area you want to keep in color. That way, the part you brush over stays in color, while the