When we view an image, we are instinctively drawn toward brighter areas and, when present, an eye. This, of course, is why nature and portrait photographers always focus on the eye of the subject.
One dramatic implementation of these rules is to create a black and white photograph with only a single “point of color.” The viewer will be inevitably drawn to this point.
To illustrate, consider this image of a big horn sheep (Jasper National Park):
What intrigued me about this image was (of course) the horn but most of all, that big, orange eye. I wanted to emphasize these features, and importantly to create “drama” by conveying to the viewer, the sheepʼs penetrating stare.
To accomplish this, I decided to convert the image to black and white using NIK Softwareʼs Silver Efex Pro, yielding this image:
Note how the texture of the hair and horn is emphasized, giving a more dramatic effect. But, the conversion has left the eye dark, hollow-- precisely the opposite of what I intended for the image. I have lost that sense of intrigue, the “penetrating” stare. What I needed to do was to restore the color to the eye.
With Silver Efex, this can be done in one of several ways:
- Select the “brush” button thereby allowing you to brush Silver Efex onto the image. NIK then allows you to use Photoshopʼs brush tool to apply the effect to specific areas of the image.
- Select the “apply” button to apply Silver Efex across the entire image.
Then create a standard Photoshop layer mask and choose black as your paint color. You can then use Photoshopʼs brush tool to remove Silver Efexʼs conversion from any area of the image. The advantage of using Photoshopʼs brush tool is that you can select the opacity of the brush (hence allowing you to apply Silver Efex either 100% or any lesser amount, i.e. with gradations) to any area of the image. The advantage of creating a Photoshop layer mask (i.e., the second method) is that it allows you to later modify how you applied Silver Efex.
The resulting image:
