Is it easy to color only some parts of an image/photograph?
Yes.
Is it easy in Adobe Fireworks?
It’s even easier than you may think! :-)
(original photo by Ani, CC)
The image above was edited by me in less than 5 minutes, and yet, the final effect is quite impressive!
How it is done?
There are probably more than five ways to achieve a similar effect, but here’s how I proceeded:
1) Open a digital photograph in Fireworks;
2) ctrl+shift+D (cmd+shift+D on a Mac) to clone the layer with the photo;
3) In the Layers panel you now have 2 identical layers, both of them in color;
4) Select the lower layer, “lock” it in the Layers panel;
5) Select the upper layer, use menu Commands > Creative > Convert to Grayscale to convert it to black & white;
6) Now you have a b&w layer above a color layer;
7) From now on, it is easy: simply delete (use Marquee Tool, Eraser Tool, or a combination of both) parts of the upper, b&w layer, and the color parts will start to show through! Done! :-)
This technique can be quite effective, if applied to the right kind of image. In this case the original is very good for this purpose, as color is almost missing from it.
You can try to play with colors in GIMP, Fireworks, Photoshop — I don’t think there will be much difference in any contemporary graphics pogram:)
Finally, thanks to Geri, who inspired me to try this effect in Fireworks! ;-)