Easy "Colourized" Photos in GIMP

I am going to show you how to create a photo with a black and white background but colored foreground in the GIMP.

PS: I got the idea from this Instructable

http://www.instructables.com/id/Colorize-Black-and-White-Photos-With-Color-in-GIMP/

It's a great instructable but here is a different (perhaps easier) way to do it.

Step 1 What you need

A computer running Windows, MacOS or a distribution of Linux.
GIMP (free) http://www.gimp.org/
a digital camera - optional

Comments

[agiffin]

Heres what woy get if you use the last step

[sfaarungsang]

ok. and what it was used for?

[instructables_user_4783]

This instructable simply shows how to create an effect to a colored photo. Makes the background black and white and the foreground colored.

[tomtriglone]

I gotta say I don't find this instructable terribly useful. The method described above is pretty time-consuming for what should be a simple effect. Having to choose and "alpha" every single foreground colour that you don't want by Hex code is surely not very practical if you have a complicated foreground, and then the use of  "selective grayscayling" is also not very pratical if you have complex objects that you wish to "colour-highlight".

I would recommend using the wagic-wand to select the object you want to keep in colour, making a copy of it onto a front layer and grayscaling the rest.

That doesn't address contrast-balance, but that's another matter.