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Remove all colors from an image but one
A specific result that people often ask about is the desaturation (removal of color) of all of the items in a movie except for one. Some feature films that have used this look to great benefit are Sin City and Pleasantville.
The basis of this workflow in After Effects is the Leave Color effect.
Tip: Set the Match Colors option in the Leave Colors effect to HSB, not RGB. It's often more useful to match hue for this color operation.
The most important thing is to plan ahead and use strong, unique colors for your subject. If other objects in the scene contain the color that you want to leave in your subject, then you may end up doing some rotoscoping---drawing and animating at least a rough mask around your subject and applying effects selectively to the areas defined by the mask.
Of course, applying one effect is seldom enough to achieve a great look. You'll probably want to pre-process your footage to isolate the target color better, and you'll probably use the Levels effect or Curves effect to fine-tune the tone response of the final image.
Here are a couple of links to tutorials that show how to achieve this look:
- Grant Swanson's Sin City tutorial on Creative COW
- John Dickinson's Leave Color tutorial on Motionworks
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