How do you take a picture of someone and make only the background black/white?

I have seen many pictures (even friends of mine who have little to no photoshop skills im sure) with this effect. Where They (the person or group of people) will be in color, while the backgroud is in black and white. Now I thought maybe they took the time to go around zoomed in and select every bit just around the silhouette which would take hours.... but no when you look at it, it is perfect. As soon as you move from the edge of their face, hair, pants... anything... it goes from color to black and white.

Anyone give me some advice on how to do this?

 

I have a thread asking how to do this 3 threads down, look around.



People use gradient maps, copy the layer and put it overtop, use a black and white gradient map and erase what you dont want desaturated.

 

Just use photoshop and use the little tool that automatically traces whatever you want it to and cuts it out. Cut out the person with that tool, save just the person, or copy the person to your clipboard, them make your background and paste the person to it.

Sorry for the lack of terms, havent used photoshop in a while.

 

I thought I already posted this?

Anyways, I don't think it will be that easy since photoshop doesn't know what the 'background' is and get just make it black and white. What you could do is go to Layer -> New layer adjusment -> Gradient Map, Pick black and white. Then set the blending option to whichever looks the best. Grab the pentool, and go around to body (or bodies ). Make a selection and fill it with black. Putting black on a gradient map is like erasing parts of it. If this doesn't work/doesn't look so good, tell me. I hope I helped you.

 

I thought I already posted this?

Anyways, I don't think it will be that easy since photoshop doesn't know what the 'background' is and get just make it black and white. What you could do is go to Layer -> New layer adjusment -> Gradient Map, Pick black and white. Then set the blending option to whichever looks the best. Grab the pentool, and go around to body (or bodies ). Make a selection and fill it with black. Putting black on a gradient map is like erasing parts of it. If this doesn't work/doesn't look so good, tell me. I hope I helped you.

 

Dude.. not cool
You just copied my whole post? Wtf.. word to word.. your the worst post counter getter upper.

 

Fail? (Clint)