How to get the look

Open your starting image. If you want to use ours to practise with, it’s on the disc and it’s called paint_start. jpg. We gave our image a little edit beforehand in the Camera Raw editor and boosted the Contrast, Clarity and pulled the Blacks to make the background darker. Once you’re happy with the tone and contrast of your image, open it int Photoshop.

The first thing to do is add a Black and White Adjustment Layer. Do this by clicking on the ying-yang symbol in the Layers panel and select Black & White from the pop-up menu. You can now tweak the individual colour channels until you’re happy with the look of the shot.

Next, get a soft-tipped brush set to around 50% Opacity. Paint with black to brush away a trail over the face, to create the illusion that the brush has removed the monochrome effect. Make tweaks with a Curves Adjustment Layer to finalise the look.