Colorizing B&W Photographs in PhotoShop

Main
Introduction
The Basics
Colorizing
Colorizing Page 2
Colorizing Page 3
Colorizing Page 4
Colorizing Page 5

Main

PhotoShop Tutorial - Colorizing B&W Photographs

Click picture for larger version

In this detailed tutorial, I will endeavor to illustrate the steps and techniques of turning your black and white photos into vibrant colour images.  While not very important for fabulous B&W images, bringing new life to those old family photos will be very rewarding.  Your children and grandchildren will no longer believe the world was in black and white in the old days.

Introduction

Introduction

I had recently posted a colorized image I had done, and to my surprise, people wanted to know how to do it and requested that I do an article on the subject.  I'll try not to create a novel out of this, but still give you enough detailed information that by the end, you'll actually be able to colorize your own images.

I started the idea of doing this when I had seen a students sample image on a college web site.  The image fascinated me and I set out to learn how to do it.  Instead of looking it up on the net and reading how to do it, I immediately opened PhotoShop 7 and began scanning old family photos into the program.  Within minutes I had discovered the basic principles and over a few days had established a good set of techniques for quickly and accurately colouring images.

My art background hovers around novice; however the family ability is very strong, I just haven't honed it in the traditional sense.  For basic projects you won't need an art degree, but knowing simple color and shading techniques really does help.  No matter your skill level, nothing can beat sheer practice.  If you don't like what you have done at the end of a project, note what you would like different, and start over.  The image of the soldier was done twice.

This was my very first attempt after a few practice sessions.  The original photograph is about 2x3 and a 1:1 transfer from the negative.  It has enough detail when scanned to be printed on 8.5x11 film paper and look fabulous.  I accurately coloured everything I could see in the image. I showed the final printed version to my Grandmother who later framed the image.  To rescue a photograph from the depths of a shoebox is a wonderful feeling.  

The Basics

The Basics

Selecting the Right Image

When you begin, choose images lacking in people.  Matching skin tones is just plain difficult.  The slightest shade difference, and humans pick it up as being very wrong.  My soldier image is probably the best I can do right now without focusing completely on flesh tones.  Rocks, trees, shrubs, lawn, these are great starting places because of the rather simple color that needs to be applied.  Water, depending on the image can be very simple and provide the most impact.  But it has to be just right, otherwise its just has hard as doing a face.

This is a picture of my father at our family cottage.  I know the location, so it was rather easy to colour.  The water was amazing when it was finished.  The full size image looks as if it was taken last summer.  I was so impressed with the water, I tried another water photograph, but was greatly disappointed by the incredible difficulty of getting the colour, shade, and temperature close enough to look realistic.  So don't be disappointed if at first you spend a couple hours then realize the difficulty of the image.  Save it where you are and start another.  You'll come back to it later when your skill has increased.

Scanning and Setting up PhotoShop

When you scan your image into PhotoShop, do not save to a file first then open it with Photoshop.  This degrades the image quality and usually alters the image size to unrealistic numbers.  Instead just import it directly into your workspace.  Once this is complete, your going to want to set the resolution to at least 300dpi, it makes it easier to work on the small details and if you decide you want to print the image, you won't have to worry about pixel doubling reducing image quality.

Layers

Photoshop is all about the layers.  And they are going to be important here.  Once your image has been imported and resized, your ready to add another working layer.  I'll assume you have a basic understanding of PhotoShop and not do the play by play.  Create a new layer and select its mode as overlay.  This will allow us a working layer in which we can add colour without destroying the detail on the original.

Now we are ready to start colouring our image.  In the next section, I will choose a sample image and show the process from beginning to end.

Colorizing

Colorizing

I won't be able to show the steps like a training guide would, but I'll do my best to highlight the important parts and give you enough knowledge to experiment yourself.  The sample image will be used to show the technique and will not be a totally finished image.  The following are however, completely finished and show what can be accomplished.  All were originally black and white photographs ranging in age from 50 to 75 years.

    Quick Tips

    1.  Have your digital images handy before starting, they will be indispensable when it comes time to select colours.  The best way to make an image look realistic is to use realistic colours.

    2. Go Outside!  Once you start this, you'll really become fixated on colour and texture.  How does a tree's leaves really look?  How many shades make up a blade of grass?  These are some of the questions you'll begin to ask yourself.

    3.  Know the species of plants and trees in the image, or at least what species exist in the region where the picture was taken.  Getting at least close to the actual colour will enhance the realism even more.  Subconsciously people will notice, even if they couldn't tell the difference between a birch and a cedar.

    4.  Have Fun!  It's a new learning experience, if you learn one new thing, it has been worth it.

Colorizing Page 2

Section 1

Here is the sample image I have chosen to for this article.  It’s in bad shape, but the scene is fantastic.  These are also family members at the cottage, and I own the rights to it, so it's another bonus.  Perhaps in the future, I'll add another section to the article on how to go about replacing the missing piece of this image, but that will be an advanced section, and I wouldn't start with this image.  But it can be done, and done convincingly!  For the mean time, let's crop out what we don't need.  I scanned the original at 600 dpi; this will be an adequate resolution for our needs.  If your image is less then 300 dpi, now is the time when you would change the resolution to allow a large enough image to work with and to reduce image artefacts later on.

Section 2

We need to convert the image to greyscale to remove any colour staining from the original image.  This will give us a clean black and white canvas to work from.  It's very important that you now convert the image back to RGB; otherwise you will not see any colour no matter how much you apply. 

Create a new layer and set it's mode to Overlay.  You will always work in this layer, so be sure to check regularly that you have not changed layers.

There are only a couple tools in which we will be using primarily.  These are the airbrush tool and the Eyedropper tool.  The airbrush is self explanatory, but I'll explain the eyedropper.  Photoshop has preset colours called swatches which we will use and you also have the ability to create any colour you can think of.  But when it comes to what we are doing, arbitrarily picking colours will not do, they need to represent real life objects, so why not just select the colours from real objects.  This we will do with the eyedropper.

Your next step is to look at the image and determine the main elements.  Here we have water, rock, trees, and people.  We need to find colour samples of objects similar to the ones we whish to colour.  Go through your photographs and look for scenes that contain these elements.  Also make sure to match the lighting situations.  For instance, look in your photographs for pictures of water close to the bank with a backdrop of trees and in shade.  This will give you the closest colour match.  It will also show you what water really looks like in that situation.  Do the same for all the other elements.  Note:  Always make working copies, never work from the original, you'll just give yourself a bad day!  I usually make a folder for my colour sample images to make reviewing faster and easier.  You'll also find that you use the same images for many different projects, so it's nice to keep them together and ready to go.

Colorizing Page 3

Section 3

I'll now explain the basic principle of the overlay layer.  We want to tint the image in colour's which match the original objects, we want to do it without loosing the detail of the image.  By painting in the overlay layer, we are allowing the colour to show through the transparent grayscale layer, the combination of flat colour and textured shades, gives us the illusion of a full colour image.  Pretty basic concept isn't it?  There are no other tricks, this is basically it.  Doing it convincingly may take some practice however.

I'll start by changing the view settings to actual pixels and focusing on the large boulder.  I'll use the swatch colours for the rock because I know what the moss growth looks like and can accurately simulate it with just a few of the preset colours.  Begin by selecting your darkest colour first, set the paint brush to airbrush and reduce the opacity somewhere under 20% and flow around 12%.  You want to make light adjustments, adding many levels of colour, the same way you would use an airbrush in real life.  Depending on the darkness of the object, you may need to adjust the flow and opacity.  An interesting fact is that you cannot colour complete white, we are only changing the tone of the shaded areas, this actually aides in the illusion.

The history brush is extremely important, you will constantly find that you have made mistakes and will want to back up.  Increase the number of history steps to about 50 and be sure to save different version of the image along the process.  There is nothing worse then being nearly complete and learning a new technique but having to start all over because you didn't have an intermediate copy.  Your brush size will also be extremely important.  For this rock I used  a large brush to apply a large area of consistent colour, and then switched to a finer brush to highlight details and to get into corners.  The rock is not finished; it's best to lay down a foundation of colour then move on to another location, as you learn the feel of the photograph and how the colours interact as a whole, you can come back and make detail adjustments.

Colorizing Page 4

Section 4

At first the process of adding minute amounts of colour to the image is tedious, but you will get much faster.  Here I have begun the process of colouring the leaves in the trees; this can be slow, but worth it.  Open your colour sample image as shown and select the eyedropper tool.  Change the sample size to 5 by 5; this will take an average reading in an area 5 pixels by 5 pixels.  This will be a more accurate representation of the colour you are seeing in the sample image.  I always select two samples at the same time, a light hue and a dark one.  This way I can quickly switch between the two to create depth and tone.  I said previously that it's good to start with the dark colour, most of the time this is true, but you'll have to experiment first to determine how much colour the area can take.  These leaves required constant adjustment of flow and opacity.  Each time you add a colour, it affects the layer of colour before it, this quickly compounds and you can easily apply too much.

It's far better during your first few times to put a rough layer of colour down to get the feel of doing it.  Pick small tasks and try different techniques.  If you get frustrated as soon as you begin, you will not stick with it long enough to increase your ability.

Just as you selected the green shades for the leaves, you will continue to do so for the entire image.  Working in small areas and making small adjustments.  This would be a good image to start working with flesh tones, because the people are not close up and only a minimal amount of shade will make it look realistic.  They will appear almost white to begin with.

This covers the bulk of what I can show you.  The tools are present in PhotoShop; it's a matter of finding your own abilities that make the difference.  This type of work is straight forward; there are very little mathematical tricks involved, just simple colouring and shading.  In the final section I will show a final draft image and how to create the final effect of realism.

Colorizing Page 5

Section 5

I hope you have made it this far and that I have managed to explain this coherently.  Below is the final draft image of the sample project.  After you have finished your image, save it as a PhotoShop document with the layers intact, you'll need them if you want to make changes later on.  To finish the project, flatten  the layers to one image.

The image now has colour and some details not obvious in the original have surfaced.  The new detail will be determined by how much care you take in putting the proper colour where it needs to go and where it doesn't need to be.  Your eye will fill in and believe there is colour, even when there is not.  The trick is to learn when not to use colour.  For instance, in this image, the water and the bank have sporadic blotches of colour, but you brain fills in the rest.

This image still has a soft, cloudy feeling to it.  There is one final step that needs to be applied.

Note about Colour

Even if you are taking colour samples from your current photographs, it will pay off to do a little research on fabrics and fashion for the time period of your image.  Guys! Ask the gals about your colour schemes when it comes to women's clothes, they will tell you if it is right or not.

Once you have finished and flattened the image,  the next and final step is to apply the same colour correction you would apply to all of your scanned or digital photos.  You may choose to perform a manual correction of colour and levels, but I have found the most natural results from the automated levels, contrast and colour settings.  You will have to try each individually because they will all yield different results.  Below are the examples of each.  From left to right:  Auto Levels, Auto Color, and Auto Contrast.  Most of the time, levels and contrast give the same result, but you'll have to try them to make sure.  Auto Color has the most drastic change but not always pleasing.  The greens in the middle image are not as green, however the blues are richer.  It's also difficult to determine from the image at this resolution.  It will depend on the final output.

And now finally, here is the original image and the final colorized version

Final Words

I sincerely hope I was able to convey the steps required to perform this intriguing bit of PhotoShop work.  With winter coming and more time spent inside rather then out shooting, colorizing images can be a rewarding past time.  It will give you chance to go through the shoebox of family photos you have laying away, renew old memories, and learn a bit of history.

This technique is also not limited to just black and white images.  Using the exact same process, colour images can be manually and precisely edited for colour tone, detail, and effects.  It's all up to your imagination.  I completed the sample image in about 30 minutes.  With more time and more effort, this image could have easily been made to look as if it was taken a few years ago.  But sometimes that isn't the point.  Restoration can come in many forms; this is just one of them.  Whether you are just having fun, or rebuilding a family history, the process is the same with just as much enjoyment.  I hope you have enjoyed reading this article as much as I have enjoyed creating it. 

Please be sure to rate this article and check out my PhotoSIG home page.

W. Blair Cox

If you would like to discuss this article and techniques involved, please join the conversation by clicking on the link below.

Forum/Technique/Colorizing Black and White Photographs

Read 36,220 times

Reply 

Return to articles