How to Colorize, Recolor, and Turn a Photo to Black and White in Photoshop Elements 4.0

How do you put color in a B&W image?  This is a common question among those who like to dabble in digital photography.  

*Note that this is written for Photoshop Elements 4.0.  The second part of this entry will tell you how to change to color of the non B&W portion to something other than it's original color. 

1. Open your image. 

2. Press CTRL+J to create a New Layer Via Copy (you can also choose Layer>New>Layer Via Copy). We will be working entirely on this new layer, Layer 1 to do this. 

3. Press B to get your brush tool, and press D to set the foreground color to black. Choose a soft round brush, and in the Mode pull-down box, change to 'Color'. Set the Opacity to 100% if it's anything different. Choose a large size for this brush, since we are going to color over the whole image. 

4. Brush over the whole image. You will see that this turns the image black and white.

5. Brush until you have colored the whole picture. Press Z to get your zoom tool, and zoom in on the area that you want to leave colored. In this case we're doing the lips. Zoom in as close as you need to see the area clearly.

6. Press E to get your erase tool. Choose a soft round eraser, in a size that is adequate for your image. It needs to be small enough to get into the details of the area you want to leave colored. You can change the size as much as you need to. Now erase the area you want to leave colored. You will start to see the color showing through. If you just want to leave the area the original color, you're all done, all you need to do is save your image (be careful not to overwrite your original if you don't want to lose it!). If you want to change the color of this area, continue with the steps below.

Changing the color of the original object/area