I love selective colouring photographs. While this is one of the most time-consuming step of a post-processing workflow, it can breathe life into otherwise ordinary photographs. It can also be used to draw attention to a particular object in crowded field. The following pictures are my experiments with applying selective desaturation in Adobe Lightroom on a few pictures from my trip to Amsterdam 2012 spring.
You may wish to click on the pictures to see a larger version on flickr. As always I look forward to comments and criticisms.
Juridicious 
J: The wooden stand on which the cheese is kept…….. Is this used only for selling and carrying cheese? Is this only found in Amsterdam or in other places in Europe? It needs two people to carry this and seems heavy for such a light thingy like cheese. Not quite an efficient contraption? Any special reason for it to need two people?
This is a stylised cheese cart. These I’ve seen around the Netherlands for ferrying cheese up and down stairs and from storage basements. And no, each block of cheese will weigh upwards of 3-5 kilos. Similar carts can be found in other parts of Europe. This one has a stand, but there are others without stands as well.
I liked the first and last photographs best, especially the one of the cheese. Perhaps the pink parasol could have also been “de-coloured” (is that a word?) ……..
Aparna: I did think about desaturing the parasol as well. May give it a go today. I think yellow on monochrome works best, don’t you?
I’ve played with these techniques myself, they’re sometimes – like here – very effective!
Yes indeed! They do take some time, however, to make it just that bit of a “special” rather than routine..