Tutorial: AKVIS Coloriage

Selective desaturation

Watch a flash movie demonstrating the technique of selective desaturation with AKVIS Coloriage. Click here! (flash-movie, 10.1 Mb)

You will see how to desaturate a part of the image leaving other parts untouched. You won't need to select the areas to be desaturated precisely.

We use the plugin version in this tutorial, but you can take the standalone program and do the same to achieve this result.

• Step 1. Open the color photo in your photo editor.

• Step 2. Call the AKVIS Coloriage plug-in. For this purpose in Adobe Photoshop select the menu item Filter – AKVIS – Coloriage; in Corel PHOTO-PAINT - select the menu item Effects – AKVIS – Coloriage.
• Step 3. Activate the Keep Color Pencil and draw an outline inside the butterfly that should keep its colors. You do not need to outline the butterfly feelers as they are black and will have the same color after the desaturation.
  
• Step 4. Select a gray color (the easiest way is to use the Swatches palette) and outline the butterfly using the Pencil tool .
  
• Step 5. Start the process of the selective desaturation by pressing the button .
  

  Now it is a gray scale picture, only the butterfly has kept its colors.

• Step 6. Apply the selective desaturation to the photo by pressing the button .

You can experiment with other photos, for example, with a portrait.

Selective desaturation allows you to highlight key points and see the photo in a different way.