History Brush Tool For PS, CS3

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History Brush Tool For PS, CS3

The History Brush Tool in Photo Shop CS3 is great for adding color to one object in black and white or sepia photos. Learn exactly how to use it in this great tutorial.

By Mark Poppen on April 11th, 2008 in Tutorials |

I got the question “What does the History brush tool do?”. I decided to do a tutorial on it, since it’s pretty simple to explain, and this is my first tutorial. In short: When you have a colour-photo which you want in black and white, sepia or want to use any other filter on the background and make 1 object stand out in colour. Here it goes.

Step 1)

Open the file you want to edit. I took an image from Stock xchng for this tutorial. Remember: the bigger the better.

history brush

Step 2)

Turn it into black and white. Don’t use the grayscale method, but Image > Adjustments > Black and White. (or Alt + Ctrl + Shift + B).

history brush

In the next screen I just clicked OK, but you can make adjustments if you want. Just drag the sliders to your taste.

history brush

Step 3)

History brush tool The fun part: Draw!
Take your History Brush tool and start drawing. Experiment with brush-sizes (on your keyboard the “[" and "]” keys), and start drawing the object you want to put the colour back in.

Step 4)

Save your file. You are done! Wasn’t that easy?
This is the after-image I created:

history brush

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About The Author

Mark Poppen

Mark Poppen is a freelance web designer from a small town in Canada. Obsessed by the design of web sites he tries to keep the highest standard possible in the process of creating a web site. He started fiddling with web sites around the mid-90's and has received several degrees since then. He likes to create the website for the grocery store around the corner, or the hairdresser down the street. Personal contact is one of his favorite aspects of the way he's doing business.

Comments

abi said :
November 4th, 2008 at 4:22 am

this doesnt help how u came up with the photo… hope u will be able to do it step by step…anyways, thanks for the tutorial.
Mark Poppen said :
November 4th, 2008 at 11:13 am

@abi: Thanks for your comment, but what do you mean exactly? If you follow the steps in the tutorial , you’ll get the result of the last image.
There used to be an image for the history brush-icon in this tutorial. Don’t know what happened to that one, but you can use that as a brush. Experiment with it, and you’ll soon find out how exactly to use it.

Thanks again,
Mark