Then you have to constantly work with photographs and images. And, depending on the idea, the photo can be color or black and white.

Some projects require black and white images, others work better with color images, but in some cases colorized images are best. black and white photos graphies

In this lesson you will learn two useful techniques Adobe Photoshop to add color to gray-scale photos. One method works well when you want to paint a specific area a uniform color, while the second, more subtle technique allows you to make the same area multi-colored. Both methods, creating a realistic color photograph, while maintaining the texture of the original image.

Step 1

Open in Photoshop black and white image. I took as an example a photograph from the collection of the New York Public Library, posted for public use.

Step 2

Old photographs often show scratches and traces of dust, and although they were not removed in this tutorial, there are a few scratches that are too noticeable in this photo to get rid of. This can be done using the Clone Stamp tool (S), selecting for our example soft brush size 60 px.

Select the sample to clone by pressing Alt/Option and clicking somewhere in the least scratched area. Then click on the scratch to replace that area at the pixel level with the content of the selected sample. Do not share samples to avoid repeating patterns in the image texture.

Step 3

Now, having removed noticeable defects, you can begin painting. The first method involves selecting the area to be painted and adding color through Hue/Saturation adjustments. To select a dress whose outline contains many straight lines, the Polygonal Lasso tool is used here.

Note: By pressing the spacebar, you can drag the canvas as you like without interrupting the selection process, and Ctrl/Cmd combinations with the “-” or “+” signs will allow you to change the scale without turning on the Zoom tool.

Step 4

Having highlighted top part dresses, move the canvas and press Shift to select the rest. WITH Shift key new area will be added to the selected one, and with the Alt/Option key subtracted. With the object to be painted completely selected, you need to smooth out the outline of the selection by going to Selection > Refine Edge (Selection > Refine Edge) and setting the feather parameter to 1 px.

Then go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (Image > Correction > Hue/Saturation) and, checking the Colorize checkbox, select the desired color.
Note: Before you remove the selection, you can save it just in case by selecting Select > Save Selection (Selection > Save Selection). This will allow you to quickly load the selection when you need to add color.

Step 5

Repeat steps 3 and 4 for other, solid-colored parts of your photo (in in this case this is chicken). Try it various options hue, saturation and brightness ratios, but if you want to avoid a "cartoon" effect, do not increase the saturation level.

Step 6

To color the remaining areas, and in our case these are the legs of the chicken, the hair of the girl and background, let's use another technique, main idea which consists in painting a heterogeneous object on a new layer and then selecting a suitable overlay (mixing) mode for the layers.
Select the legs, hair and background into a single area, even though they will have different colors.

Create new layer, by clicking on the icon with a hint Create a New Layer (Create a new layer) on the layers palette below. Then select a soft brush and paint the photo in the outline of the selected area, selecting the desired colors and adjusting the brush size. For convenience, you can temporarily reduce the opacity of the new layer.

Don't worry - this is not the end result yet!

Step 7

Expand the list of layer blending modes and select one of these for the colored layer: Multiply (Multiplication), Overlay (Overlay), Soft Light (Soft light), or Color (Color), which will depend on your image. Here the Soft Light mode is selected and the opacity is reduced to 44%.

Here you have a color photo! Using these two methods, you can make almost any black and white photograph more interesting and expressive.

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 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 Ctrl key then 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, with right side from the name of the layer 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 designed to load a layer template for of this type images. Subsequently, layers can be cloned, deleted and changed sequence.

Probably everyone had coloring books in childhood. AND turn a black and white picture into color it wasn't difficult. They simply took pencils or paints and colored the pictures in the book. And what a pleasure it was to watch how gradually black and white picture was becoming color. Now you can do something similar in Photoshop, take and colorize black and white photo . During the coloring process, it will be interesting to observe how the photo changes. There are many ways colorize black and white photo. I suggest one of them. Let's find an old black and white photograph and open it in Photoshop.

1-File-open.

Before you start coloring, you need to look at the color mode of the photo. Let's go:

2-Image-mode. Convert a photo to RGB mode if it is in a different color mode.

3-Unlock background layer, in the layers window, double-click on the “background” layer with the left mouse button and, in the window that appears, click “ok”.

Now you can start coloring.

4-Layer-new-layer. Fill it with some color for the background:

5-Editing - fill. In the “fill in” window, click on the checkbox on the first page and select the word “color”. A color palette window will appear, here select a color - 51300d and “ok”.

6-Go to the layers window and select the “chromatic” blending mode for this layer.

And the photo will look like this:

7-Layer-new-layer. And immediately in the layers window select the blending mode " soft light". On this layer we will paint the hair.

8-On the vertical toolbar, click on the colors button

and, in the color palette window, select a color - 442606. Click “ok”.

9-On the toolbar, select a brush with a soft edge, size 16-18 px. and dye your hair.

If somewhere you painted more than necessary, you can erase it with an eraser, only then remember to return the brush. Let's soften the hair a little.

10-Filter-blur-Gaussian blur, radius 6.

Now go back to the layers window, on the layer with a brown fill, click on this layer (it will turn blue) and add a layer mask to it. To do this, click on the create mask button. A white rectangle will appear on the layer strip.

Now we need to erase the background from the areas that we will paint. But first, check that the brush is selected and not the eraser; in the layers window, the layer with the mask is active (colored in blue), on the toolbar the foreground and background colors are black and white. If the colors are different, then press D on the keyboard (on the English layout).

Using a brush, we begin to erase the brown background in the photo where it will be painted. To make it easier to erase, select zoom on the toolbar, and at the top and click on the photo to enlarge it. Return the brush tool and erase the background with a brush.

Erase the background from the face, hands, bouquet of flowers, shoe and flowers on the hat. If you have erased more in some place, then go to “edit-step back”.

We will paint each area on a new layer.

11-Layer-new-layer. In the layers window, select the blending mode “soft light”. This is a face layer.

Click on the color button on the toolbar, select the color f3c28e and use a brush to paint the face and hands.

12-Layer-new-layer, blending mode "soft light". Here we paint our lips.

Click on the color button again and select color b13a48. Use a soft-edged brush to paint your lips.

13-Layer - new layer, blending mode "soft color". Let's add some blush to the cheeks. Take a brush with a soft edge, size 28 px, color as on the lips and click on each cheek.

14-Filter-Gaussian blur, radius 20-25.

16-Layer-new-layer, blending mode "soft light". We paint our eyes.

17-Click on the colors button, select the color for the iris 22406c and with a soft-edged brush, the size of the iris, click on one eye, then on the other.

18-Layer-new-layer, blending mode "chromatic". On this layer we will paint the shoe, flowers in the bouquet and on the hat. Click on the color button, select color f48693.

19-Layer-new-layer. Blend mode "chroma". This layer is for the leaves of the bouquet. Color 263621.

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 methods choices that can be used at this stage. These are Quick Selection Too, Lasso, Pen ( 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 highlighted it" 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. Translation color mode images in 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 in automatic mode.
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 any program, you just need to scan or photograph the original and attach it to online editor, do a couple of “magic” manipulations and voila you will have a black and white photograph with color 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.

Who still really wants to try themselves as an artist, and in fact, this is the case, the process is not just coloring, but awareness of depth color palette In the picture, I will show you the 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.