History Brush Tool For PS, CS3

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

2 Comments on "History Brush Tool For PS, CS3"

  1. abi says:

    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.

  2. Mark Poppen says:

    @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

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