I have been asked several times is it even possible to create Selective Color images in Adobe Lightroom Classic. It’s actually pretty easy, especially with the right photo.

Take this simple orange gerbera. So I thought I’d put together a little post about how to create selective color in Lightroom, using the Radial Filter.

Original Image

Step 1

Pick you image something that has a nice round form, like the flower. Grab the Radial Filter and drag a circle out surrounding the flower, make sure Invert is unchecked to affect the outside of the circle. Then grab the Saturation slider and pull all the way to the left (-100).

Step 2

Now while the Radial Filter is still active, grab the brush (Not the Adjustment Brush) and set it to Erase and carefully paint back in all the petals that have lost all the color. This leaves the rest of the image monotone. Click Done when finished.

Tip: You can turn the mask for the Radial Filter on and off by pressing the letter O on the keyboard. By pressing Control and O (or Command and O on a Mac) you can change the color of the mask.

You now have a lovely selective color image, you can even change the color of the flower, by adding a New Radial Filter and this time set the Invert to on and then alter the Hue slider to whatever color you fancy.

Here’s my final image.

Selective Color final image