Letter example of colorizing the "O" photo

I started by loading the photo into photoshop adjusted the levels and cropped the image down to the specific size that I wanted and then I put a layer mask upon the photo. Then I used the pen tool to create a path around the "O" and made the path into a selection. Afterwards I inverse the selection to where the negative space was selected and i filled it with black which hid the negative space because of my layer mask. I used a layer mask because if i took off too much information in the cut out I can still retrieve information back if i use white on the mask. I then created a hue/saturation layer then selected colorize and made the "O" orange.

photo before

photo after