PhotoFiltre Studio Tutorial a Splash of Color

I chose this tutorial as my first for PhotoFiltre Studio to give you a quick look at the new Layers and Transparency abilities of the new Studio version.

The above effect is one I can remember doing years ago by hand with paint on my black and white images. It has gained a lot of popularity again because of how easy it is to do with software. Creating this effect with PhotoFiltre Studio is a real easy process and you will be creating your own versions in no time.

To follow along click here for the original.

1) Open up your image.

2) Right Click the background thumbnail in the Layers Palette and select Duplicate. (If the Layers Palette is not visible go to View / Layers Thumbnail / and make sure Hide is not checked).

You will now see a new thumbnail with the name Layer 1. For this Tutorial we will be doing all of our work on this new layer. In future tutorials you will see the value of layers because of the ease of moving back and forth between them.

3) Select Layer 1: Menu = Filter / Color / Grayscale. You should now have a Grayscale image like mine to the right.
Tip: Now that we created the Grayscale Layer. If you want, right click on it in the Layers Palette and select Rename Layer. You can now give it a name. This is a good habit to get into, down the road you may have 6 or 7 layers and this makes them easy to navigate. 4) With Layer 1 (or if you are paying attention and not cheating the Grayscale Layer) still selected, select the Eraser Tool from your tool Palette.
5) When you select the Eraser Tool the Eraser Brush Palette will open below it. Zoom your image to 200 or 300%, select a brush size and just start erasing. Start with a larger size brush and then choose smaller sizes for fine tuning. As you see magically the colored layer from below shows through. Tip: Release your mouse button from time to time to save everything you have erased so far. This way if you make a mistake, when you hit undo it will not take you all the way back to the beginning.
To the right is my final image. As I said in the beginning this is a real easy technique. We will be using this technique quite a bit to achieve different results and effects as we go along so I figured I would get it out of the way immediately.