Aperture video tip: Selective Black & White in Apple Aperture 2

 NOTE: This was originally posted on shutterstation.com, but since decommissioning that site I've pulled some of the articles here so they don't get lost. 

This video shows you how to do selective black & white in Aperture using either the Color brick or the included Dodge & Burn plugin. A few days ago we posted a video on how to convert your photographs to black & white in Aperture with much more control than you get with just the Monochrome Mixer. This video takes off where the previous one finished.

If you prefer to read the tip, continue reading.

This tip is really simple. To turn specific areas of your photograph to black & white while leaving others in color, you have 2 options: 

1. Color Brick: From the color brick, you can remove the saturation of specific colors by sliding the Saturation slider all the way to the left. This will turn these colors into black & white. However, doing this will desaturate the selected color in the entire image. For example, imagine a photograph of a person with blue eyes, wearing blue jeans, and standing outside with a blue sky. If you desaturate the blues, all 3 things (eyes, jeans, sky) will turn into black & white while leaving the rest in color. But what if you only want to turn the sky into black & white and not the jeans and eyes? Then you need to use the Dodge & Burn plugin.
2. Dodge & Burn: Select the photograph and go to Images>Edit with>Dodge & Burn. Once the plugin opens, you'll have your photograph in full color ready for editing. Just select "Desaturate" from the drop-down on the top-left corner and paint away. As long as your Strength is at 1 (ie. 100% Desaturation), everywhere you paint will turn into black & white. You can change the size and softness of the brush to give you more control in smaller areas. If you go over an area by mistake, just switch to Saturate and the color will return. 

UPDATE (20 Feb 2010): This applies only to Aperture 2 and is no longer valid for Aperture 3. In the new version you can do this non-destructively without the need for plugins by using the Brush in feature. I explain it briefly in a comment below, but here it is for easy access:

Anyway, the good news is that it’s even easier to do in Aperture 3, and it’s non-destructive! All you need to do is pull the Saturation slider down to zero in the Enhanced brick (the entire image will turn to black and white). Then click on the gear symbol on the upper right corner of the brick and select “Brush Enhance In”, that’ll turn the image back into color, but now you can just brush in the black & white adjustment. Just play with the controls in the brush HUD to define the brush size and softness. For pure black and white push the Strength slider all the way to the right.

A better way is to use the Black & White brick. It gives you more control over the conversion to black & white.

Comments

[Frederic]

Hi Gabe,

I only discovered today your few posts and wish to thank you very much as they are extremely useful for me.
I notice that you have not added anything since July 10th?
Is there any chance you will carry on?
It would be nice to read your views on printing procedures, how to insert the Mobile Me folder in one's library (as seen on your post), etc...
Thanks again for some great posts.
Regards
Frederic

[gabe]

Hi Frederic,

Thanks for the comments, and I'm happy you found them useful. Yes, I'll continue to write about Aperture regularly. In fact, I have a post/video almost ready about my Library and how I organize my photographs that should go out over the weekend. I've just been more focused lately on the black & white photography articles, but will try to increase the Aperture ones! If you have any questions or suggestions for what to cover just send us a message through the form on the site or via http://twitter.com/shutterstation" rel="nofollow">Twitter.

About the MobileMe folder in the Library, you don't have to insert it, it just appears when you publish to MobileMe. If you have an account just create a folder with the photographs you want to publish to a MobileMe album and go to New>MobileMe Album to create it. Once published, it'll appear in the folder you see in the Library.