Photoshop tutorial: The easiest thing you will ever learn in Photoshop. Period.

When I got Photoshop on my computer and opened it up for the first time, I felt what Tom Arnold must have felt upon seeing Rosanne naked for the first time: intimidated and a little unsure where to start.  But, thankfully Google had some answers for me (but no pictures of the afore mentioned naked Rosanne unfortunately) and now that I have learned a few other things with this crazy little Photoshop thing, I can share this one with you.

Regardless of why you have Photoshop, you may have considered getting any type of professional photography done. If so, you’ve probably seen the pictures where they have colored a portion of a black and white photo, making it look all cool and unique.  They did this with Photoshop.  They will then offer to do this for you for a fee:  a huge fee in most cases.  After I show you how to do this nifty little Photoshop trick, you might be tempted to hit the next person in the mouth who asks for money to do the same thing.  It’s that simple.  It will also let you seem like a pro with the latest version of Photoshop.  Amaze your family with this trick.  Get dates.  Save puppies from fires.  Or just add some color to a photo using a Photoshop program that would otherwise site and collect electronic dust.

Most photographers now days will take a digital photo, a color photo, and make it black and white in Photoshop.  Its’s cheaper, it’s easier, and it gives them more control.  With that being said, you will need to find yourself a color photo to play with.  I went to stock.xchng for mine and go there for most of my random Photoshop needs.  You can set up a free account and almost all the photos on there are free to use with minimal licensing requirements.  I went there for this picture.  I found what I needed in a few seconds and I’m sure you’ll have no problem finding something like it in the same amount of time if you don’t like this one.  Also keep in mind that I will assume that all of this Photoshop business is new to you, rather than assume you’ll know what I’m talking about because I already do (like some of these other Photoshop tutorial writers do).

Open Photoshop and open the file for the picture you found.  Great.  Now go up to menu bar, click on Image, click on Adjustments, and promptly ignore everything you see there except that part that says ‘black and white’.  Do this, or you might get all freaked out by all the choices this one Photoshop menu has to offer.  I’ve never done this, but I’ve heard stories and they are terrible...  Great, now we have a little window that is opened up and our photo is now a little black and white.

Don’t click ok yet.  I don’t like it.  It’s too washed out and uniform looking.  Which is fine because there are the handy sliders Photoshop has given us in the black and white window.  Those sliders control the color in the photo and how light or dark the tones will be.  Grab the yellow slider for fun and give it a good slide.  Weeeeee, that was fun.  Now put it back.  I’ve chosen to go with the magenta sliders to give the image a little more contrast.  I also played with the yellow and cyan as well to get the result I want.  Photoshop will allow you to really experiment with this.  I also spent about 27 seconds doing this, so it’s not great, but it’ll work for this.  Spend much more time on this than I did and really get a feel for how this works.  Keep in mind, this works great for other Photoshop applications (one of which I did a tutorial on).

We have clicked ok and are now ready for the fun to start.  I have selected the History Brush.  It’s on the left there, right under the other Photoshop like stuff.  Hold your cursor over the buttons if you have to, until you find the one you want.  Hopefully after this, you'll open Photoshop and do this to learn what the other stuff  regardless of if you know how to use it or not.  Knowing your buttons is a lot like knowing your underwear.  I don’t know how that applies to Photoshop, but just go with it.  Ok, we have the brush.  Right click the photo and you’ll get choices just like you would with a regular brush.  Now click the brush on the flower (or flowers or whatever you want to make colored).  Try to stay in the lines.  I try to make short strokes when I’m close to something I want to be careful with, that way if I have to undo it, I don’t take out the whole line or stroke.  Photoshop will let you undo quite a bit, but there is a limit to what it will let you fix.

What you’ve done with this brush is revert it back to its original state, which is a colored.  (Not like that, racist)  You can play around with this a lot, actually.  And you've learned something that doesn't require you to learn about layers or channels or Satan.  You can now go into the filter section, click the artistic charcoal filter, then history brush the girl, or part of the girl, or the back ground.  Whatever.  Have fun with it.  If you don’t have fun with it, then I suggest you get a refund on your Photoshop.  Unless you stole it, then you probably don't want to return to the store you stole it from.  Whatever happens, don't stay scared of Photoshop.