The artistic conception of the original picture material is relatively good, with the misty and rainy colors of the south of the Yangtze River. Coupled with the characters' classical costumes, the photo looks particularly distinctive. When coloring in the tutorial, I just faded the background appropriately and added some smoke decoration.
Original picture
final effect
1. Open the original image material, create a threshold adjustment layer, set the parameters as shown in Figure 1, and the effect as shown in Figure 2.
<Figure 1>
<Figure 2>
2. Press Ctrl + Alt + ~ to bring up the highlight selection, and then create a curve adjustment layer. The parameter settings are as shown in Figure 3. After confirming, hide the threshold adjustment layer below. The effect is as shown in Figure 4.
<Figure 3>
<Figure 4>
3. Create a hue/saturation adjustment layer. The parameter settings are as shown in Figure 5-7, and the effect is as shown in Figure 8. This step mainly turns the background into gray.
<Figure 5>
<Figure 6>
<Figure 7>
<Figure 8>
4. Create a new layer, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift + E to stamp the layer, change the layer blending mode to "Screen", change the layer opacity to: 60%, and add the layer mask with black Use the brush to erase the character part, and the effect is as shown in Figure 9.
<Figure 9>