Coloring a black and white photo in Photoshop. How to colorize a black and white photo

​One of the most familiar themes of sepia-to-color is The Wizard of Oz.

Translator's note: we are talking about the film "The Wizard of Oz", the film begins in sepia, and then colors appear, which was unique for the cinema of that time.

In this tutorial I'll show you how to tint a photo to sepia to create a color image.

Coloring a sepia or black and white photo can seem like a real challenge and can take time and patience, although it can be a lot easier than you think. Today I will show you the process of colorizing a photo in Adobe Photoshop.

Final result:

Source materials

The image I'm going to use in this tutorial is shown in the screenshot below:

Note: photo taken from http://www.loc.gov/

In my opinion, black and white photography is much easier to work with than sepia, so the first thing I did was convert the photo. This is just my personal preference and you don't have to, if you want and you like working in sepia, then work in sepia.

Translator's note: the author converted a sepia-toned photo into a black and white image using correction Black and white(BlackandWhite).

1. Select the desired mode for the picture

Once you've uploaded the photo, you'll need to make sure the picture mode is set to RGB and not on the regime Grayscale(Grayscale), even if your image is monochrome or black and white. To check the mode, for this we go Image - Mode(Image >Mode), now make sure there is a checkmark next to the RGB mode.

2. We begin to color large fragments of the image

Step 1

Using a tool Quick selection(Quick Select tool), select the sky or any other large fragment of the image that is represented by one color shade.

Using a tool Quick selection(Quick Select tool), select a fragment of the image that is represented by one color shade, for example, the sky.

Step 2

Click the button Refine edge(Refine Edge).

Use the tool Refine edge(Refine Edge) to improve the boundaries of the selected area.

Step 3

In the tool settings window that appears Refine edge(Refine Edge), check the box Smart radius(Smart Radius). I changed the radius value to 5 px, but you can set a different radius value that best suits your image. I also increased the value Smooth(Smoth) up to 3 pixels to soften hard edges. You can also apply other settings to this tool to improve the boundaries of the selection. When you're ready, click the 'OK' button.

Select the correct value for Smart radius(Smart Radius), as well as for the option Smooth(Smooth).

Step 4

So, we have created an active selection, now click the button Add a New Adjustment Layer(Add New Adjustment Layer) at the bottom of the layers palette and in the window that appears, select the option Color(Solid Color).

Add an adjustment layer Color(Solid Color) through the bottom of the layers palette.

Step 5

Choose the color shade that you think best matches the sky in your image. For now, it doesn't matter whether you chose a color tone that's too bright or not, we'll fix that in a minute. Once you have chosen a color tone, click the 'OK' button and you will see the selection on the adjustment layer mask.

Choose a suitable color shade.

Step 6

Change the blending mode to Overlap(Overlay) and the selected color will look much better. If you are not satisfied with the selected color, then simply double-click on the blue rectangle next to the mask so that a window appears Color palettes(Color Picker), select the color shade that suits you best.

Change the blending mode to Overlap(Overlay).

Step 7

If you are satisfied with the result, you can restore the missing areas of the image or correct them using a soft black/white brush, which you can apply on the adjustment layer mask.

Correct any defects left after selection.

3. Select pieces that have similar color tones

Step 1

Repeat the selection technique detailed in the previous steps, this time highlighting the greens of the carrots and watermelon. Don't select the cucumber yet, so that not all elements are the same shade of green. This time I changed the meaning Smooth(Smooth) up to 2 px when refining the edges, but again, use the values ​​that work best for you.

Apply the tool Refine edge(Refine Edge) to carrot greens.

Step 2

Without removing the active selection, add a new adjustment layer Color(Solid Color), just like you did before, select a shade of green. For now, save your degree. Opacity(O pacity) for each adjustment layer at 100%. This can be adjusted later when we finish the coloring.

Add a new adjustment layer Color(Solid Color), select a shade of green.

Step 3

Change the blending mode to Overlap(Overlay), and then select the appropriate color shade. Do the same for the cucumber, but use a different shade of green. Once you've finished coloring the vegetables, we'll move on to coloring the skin.

Change the blending mode to Overlap(Overlay).

The result so far in the lesson.

4. Skin tone and eyes

Step 1

Color the man and woman separately, because... They don't look like they have the same skin tone. A man might have a little more weathered skin!

Select areas of the skin using the selection technique you used earlier and also apply edge refinement. Next, when you press the 'OK' button, press the 'Q' key to enter the Quick mask(Quick Mask), and then use a brush to paint in the man's eyes, as well as other areas of the man's image that you don't want to add skin tone to. Press the 'Q' key again and you will see that the areas that were painted red are not included in the created selection.

By using Quick mask(Quick Mask), select any small areas that you do not want to be included in the created active selection.

Step 2

When choosing your skin tone, try applying multiple color shades to see which color tone suits you best, but remember that due to the blending mode Overlap(Overlay), the color tones will not look truly 'true'. So, use a very muted pink/brown shade instead of peach, otherwise you'll end up with an orange glow to your skin!

Choose pale pink or light brown shades instead of peach.

Step 3

To color the eyes, add a new adjustment layer. Color(Solid Color) without first creating any active selection, select a color tint. Click on the adjustment layer mask, and then press Ctrl+I to invert the mask. Now using a white brush, paint over the eyes on the mask. If you cannot see the man’s eyes behind the glasses, then reduce the value Opacity(Opacity) of the adjustment layer to 40%, thus adding just a slight hint of color.

If you are coloring a photo where you can see eyes, then remember that you only need to color the pupils of the eyes.

Add an adjustment layer Color(Solid Color) without first creating an active selection

We're done adding skin tones.

5. Lips and hair

Step 1

Once you've finished coloring the skin and eyes, we can add some light and shade by painting the lips with a slightly different shade. Select a red/brown color and also use a low opacity brush to add some color.

When coloring your lips, use a slightly different color shade from your skin tone.

Step 2

When coloring your hair, try to pay attention to the color tone of the hair in the photo to choose a more suitable color tone, even if it is a sepia or black and white photo. For the man's hair, I used a dark shade, reducing opacity(Opacity) layer up to 90% to slightly soften the tone of the hair, because... It is obvious that the man is already elderly. As for the woman, it doesn't look like she has dyed hair, so I used a dark gray color.

Choose a natural hair color and do not forget about age when choosing a hair shade.

6. Finishing touches

Finally, color your clothes. Once you've finished coloring the image, play with the opacity of the coloring layers to make the image look more natural.

One rule to remember is that less is more, and if you're going to recreate an "authentic" look, be more pragmatic with your color choices, taking into account the colors that were worn at the time, and use low saturation to give the image an "old" look. photos. If you want to be eccentric in your choice of color, then forget what I just told you - just go ahead and do it!

We colored the image, but the colors look too harsh.

Congratulations! We have completed the lesson!

When choosing old photographs that you are going to color, do not forget that the more detail there is in the photo, the longer and the more difficult it will be to color the photo. Try to first choose photos with large fragments of the same color, and then move on to more complex photos, because... It will be easier for you to use this technique. This is a truly exciting process, so I hope you have a pleasant time coloring your photos.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Now the fun begins! Your task at this stage is to create areas demarcated by color, which does not yet exist! Whether it's the sky, grass, or a shirt, you must use your imagination and worldview to determine what objects each color will go with, and where they begin and end. Photoshop includes various selection methods that you can use during this step. These are Quick Selection Too, Lasso, Pen Tool, and others.

In this case, I'll select the sky using Quick Selection:

Step 3. Refining the selection

Once your preliminary selection is ready, you should use the Refine Edge tool, especially if you're dealing with tree branches or hair selections

For each image, the Smart Radius value should be selected individually; it depends on the complexity of the selection, the size of the image, etc. Please note in the pictures below I showed the selection state before and after applying the smart radius:

Step 4: Add Color to the Sky

To apply the tool's action, click OK, after which the “marching ants” will appear again in the working document window. It's time to add color! For this we will use Curves, as this adjustment allows us to edit each color channel individually, and thanks to the use of an adjustment layer, we can change the settings if necessary later at any time.

Each object in the image will require a different combination of Curves settings to give it color, for example the image below shows how I achieved cyan by editing the cyan, magenta and yellow channels:

This is what the former black and white sky looks like now:

Step 5: Add Color to the Rest of the Image

Now let's take care of the strip of forest on the horizon. I also selected it with a Quick Selection and then used the Refine Edge tool:

Again we use the “Curves” adjustment layer with the following settings; of course, in your case they may be different. Now the forest has turned green:

All that remains is to color the field. It is not necessary to create a new selection for it; just press Crtl+Shift+I to invert the selected area and then delete the excess (in my case, the top) selected area with any selection tool in the “Subtract from Selection” mode:

Then we give the field with hay a golden color:

This is what the image looks like now:

Step 6: General Color Correction

Adjust the overall saturation using the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer:

And all that remains is to correct the overall tones and contrast again by adding a new “Curves” adjustment layer. Now let's change only the CMYK channel curve:

Well, that seems to be all. We admire the result:

So let's summarize this photo colorization method:

1. Converting an image's color mode to CMYK
2. Creating a selected area for painting
3. Add color to this area using Curves
4. General saturation correction
5. General brightness correction

step by step.

Why color black and white photos is a separate topic, but I still want to mention that we are talking about old photographs, which are usually found in every family album.

There are several ways to colorize b/w photos

1. Colorize photos yourself using Photoshop (Adobe Photoshop) or use another special photo editor.
2. Various online services automatically.
3. Order photo coloring to professionals .
4. Using pencils and paints.

Point 4 is not a joke at all; before the era of widespread computerization, they actually did this; they retouched photographs using special whitewash and coloring solutions. Now all this is in the past, all retouching of photographs and their coloring is done on a computer using a special program.

In order to colorize a photo online with some program, you just need to scan or photograph the original and put it into the online editor, do a couple of “magic” manipulations and voila you will have a black and white photo with colored spots. A pathetic semblance of a color photograph. Minimum costs, movements and understanding of what is actually happening. You need to have a good imagination to consider such a photograph to be in color.

You can go another way. Study the work of a serious photo editor, for example Adobe Photoshop, complete some art courses in drawing, and then masterpieces of fine art may appear in your family album, or they may not appear, because you still need time to colorize photographs and, as a rule, there is none. The result is a couple of clumsily colored photos, wasted time and an abandoned photo album.

In fact, if you are not comfortable with a computer and Adobe Photoshop is Photoshop for you, then the best thing to do is to order professional photo colorization. You just need to send a photo and for little money you will receive an updated photo in the family album. In this case, you will save a lot of time and effort on something that is more familiar to you, in which you yourself are a pro. If you want a moment of optimization, it’s better to do well what you can do, and not do... it’s unclear what.

For those who still really want to try themselves as an artist, and in fact, this is the process of not just coloring, but realizing the depth of the color palette in the photo, I will show you a method of coloring in Photoshop (Adobe Photoshop).

First, open the photo Ctrl+O

Then click on the bottom right to create a new adjustment layer, color tone.

Check the tint box and use the sliders to select color, saturation and brightness.

First, approximate settings, later you can correct and configure more accurately.

Select the main color black and press Alt+Delete

Now click on the brush, select the main color white by pressing X

Now we paint the required area with a brush.

Colored

By the way, if you press Alt and hold the mouse while clicking on the black field of the mask, you can see what is painted white and how evenly

Then we repeat all the points over and over again and paint over the necessary areas.

Actually, the whole process comes down to competent selection of colors, and this is creativity and painstaking work.

Tip: The more colored areas you paint, the more full-color and natural the color rendition in the photo will be.

This is the easiest way to colorize photos in Adobe Photoshop.

Here you can colorize a photo or perform color stylization. You can create interesting works from old photographs. If you want to revive an old photo you will need a scanner, our application and a little patience.

How the image is processed in the application.

The working screen or canvas consists of several transparent layers placed one above the other. The basis is the image that you uploaded, let's call it the source. Using a brush, on layers in the work area, the user applies strokes to form a kind of zone that colors the image source in this place in the desired color shade. The color tone is common to the selected layer and can be adjusted in the layer settings. Thus, within the layer, objects with the same color shade are painted, for example: face, hair, lips, eyes, etc. is that you can paint over the desired color areas, and select and adjust the shades later, at the coloring stage.

Let's get started

To teach and demonstrate the possibilities, let's try coloring a black and white photo of a face. Load the image by selecting the "Open" item in the menu, or by clicking once on the "File" menu button. On the right is the tool palette. Select the "Body" layer in the "Layers" rollout. By default, the rollout contains layers with names that are suitable for coloring the face, but you can add new ones and delete existing layers as you wish. So you have the “Body” layer selected, move the mouse cursor over the face area and paint over the face and neck area with small strokes. For now, do not pay attention to the color shade of the layer being painted; you can change it later if desired. If you accidentally painted over the wrong area, don’t be embarrassed, this step can be undone with the “Undo” command by selecting the appropriate item in the “Editor” menu or by pressing Ctrl+Z on the keyboard. You can also wipe away excess in eraser mode if you apply strokes while holding down the Ctrl key. You can change the size of the brush spot by rotating the mouse wheel, and if you hold down the Ctrl key, the blurriness of the spot will change.

Having painted the face, proceed to painting the eyes, hair and lips, first selecting the desired layer in the “Layers” rollout.

When the layers are painted over, you can, by selecting the desired layer, edit its color tone, brightness or contrast using the “Layer Tint” tool from the “Tools” menu. When the work is ready, save it to a file by selecting "Save As..." from the "File" menu.

Technical points

Layers do not overlap one another. During the painting process, if you accidentally touch a previously painted layer, the new area will overwrite the existing one. If you want the layers not to be overwritten, coloring should be done while holding down the Shift key. You can change the sequence of layers if you click on the arrows on the right side of the layer name in the "Layers" rollout. It is possible to disable a layer, or more precisely, the effect of a layer on the source, to do this you need to enable or disable the checkbox to the right of the layer name in the “Layers” rollout.

The Image Type tool is used to load a layer template for a given image type. Subsequently, layers can be cloned, deleted and changed sequence.