colour pop

Colour popping is a technique completed in Photoshop which results in the final image being predominantly in black and white with a section of the image in colour. This technique is completed within photoshop by opening the photograph, duplicating the layer, converting the upper layer to black and white then removing sections of this layer which you would like in colour with the eraser tool. This is one of my favourite techniques to complete as i enjoy the amount of freedom which you have when creating these images as you can choose exactly which parts of the image you would like to have in colour or in black and white. I had a lot of fun creating these images as once I had prepared the image before colour popping, it felt as though i has a black and white image which i was then colouring in. I found this process very relaxing and fun. In addition to this, I love the effect that colour popping has on images as it makes the part of the image which is in colour stand out a lo more than the rest of the image. This means that the part of the photographs which remains in colour is often the most important part of the photograph as this is what is seen first when you look at the image. Here are the photographs which I took and then edited in the colour pop style 

This is the fist image which i edited in the colour pop style. This is a photograph of the octopus graffiti which is located on a wall in the centre of Bradford. This photograph is originally well lit but at the same time quite dull meaning that it lacks some contrast. with this in mind, when editing this photograph, i edited the levels of the photograph slightly to make the yellow of the octopus stand out more and then when colour popping made it so the yellow octopus was what was in colour as this was the brightest colour within this photograph and this is also the main feature of this photograph. As the main feature of this photograph is in colour while the rest is in black and white, this means that the eye is instantly drawn to the main part of this photograph which is the main goal when taking a photograph of something. I am happy with the way this image looks as the colour popping is very effective in making the octopus stand out within this photograph.

This is another photograph i edited while experimenting with colour popping. This is a photograph of a red brick wall and as the entire image is the same colour i thought that this would be a perfect time to be able to get creative with the colour popping. for this photograph i chose to pick out individual bricks and put these in colour. I enjoyed this process as it meant that I was able to choose bricks to potentially make a pattern or something to this effect however with this photograph i just chose a few random bricks to put into colour however looking back at the photograph now that it has been edited, it looks as though i have chosen bricks which form diagonal lines throughout the image which i think is a nice effect although this was not the original intention as the original was to have random splashes of colour within the image which would remain predominantly black and white. I am happy with the way this image has turned out and i enjoyed creating this image a lot as i enjoyed the freedom and creativity which was open to me when editing this piece. 

This is another image which i created when colour popping in photoshop. This is a photograph of the David Hockney building and I chose to photograph this building as I like the red and pink panels which are present within this building. As this building had a bright colour incorporated in it i thought that this would be the most appropriate part to colour pop however i chose to pick out only the red and pink sections and not the full section where the windows are as i thought that by just picking out the pink and red sections it would make this part of the photograph more eye catching and i feel that it does this well. I am happy with the way this image looks.

As I found the process of colour popping very enjoyable, I took the opportunity to create some more images which are not architecture related but they do show off the colour popping technique very well. I included these photographs as they are not architecture related but they are the images which helped me to gain more experience in colour popping and the main reason I completed these images is because I enjoyed the process of colour popping so much that I had to create more with different subject matters. Here are the additional photographs which I edited: