You might need to spend some more time working on getting the color of the face as accurate as possible.
Choose a suitable colorīut this time don’t set the blend mode for this layer to ‘overlay’ instead change it to ‘color’.
#BLACK AND WHITE PICTURES SKIN#
Ensuring the skin colors look natural (and are accurate) is likely the most difficult part of adding color to a black and white image, especially if you are not sure what the colors in the original image were. In this case, we’ll choose peach skin color. You’ll also, just as before, create a new solid color fill layer and then choose a suitable color. Just like you did before, use the ‘Quick Selection’ tool but now let’s select her face. The slight variation of shade you see now may become visible later when we add color.ĭisplay your colorized images in visually appealing galleries! Get Started Now Try to match the surrounding areas as accurately as possible. This shouldn’t take more than 2-3 minutes to do perfectly… Go ahead and use the brush tool with a suitable color to fix the coloring of the original image again. It’s unlikely that the initial selection was perfect, but it wasn’t visible when the colors were the same. Simply select the fill layer from the layers tab, open the highlighted dropdown menu, and choose ‘overlay’.Ĭorrect edges where color has bled onto the subject You evidently don’t want the color to appear like it’s simply just been filled there, so you’re going to need to change the blend mode. You’ll always be able to come back and change this later.Ĭhange the blend mode from ‘normal’ to ‘overlay’ We’ll go ahead and opt for a warmer summery color, but you could always play around with it as much as you’d like. That makes for a great photograph, and although the background selection we made is clearly not the sky, it’s hard to tell what the color was in reality. Our image’s background is out of focus due to the use of a nice, low aperture, which creates the cool bokeh effect. Then change the color to something suitable. Set the type of adjustment layer that you wish to create to ‘Solid Color’ This can be done by clicking the icon shown below.Ĭreating a new solid color fill layer in Photoshop Once you have successfully made your selection, proceed to make a solid color fill layer. Learn more about the Photoshop quick selection tool, here.Ĭreate a new solid color layer from the selection This might take a few minutes, and you may need to use the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac) to de-select certain areas if the tool accidentally selected areas you didn’t intend to select. To use the ‘Quick Selection’ tool, either simply click the ‘W’ key on your keyboard or navigate to the Photoshop menu to select the ‘Quick Selection Tool’. If there is no distinct subject in the image, use the ‘Quick Selection’ tool to select a large area of your image that will have the same color, such as grass or the sky. In the case of the image we’re using, it’s fairly straightforward to use the ‘Quick Selection’ tool to separate the background (or sky) from the subject of the image. Using the ‘Quick Selection’ tool, select the background Open the image that you wish to colorize photos using Photoshop If you don’t already own Photoshop, you can get it from here. As you can see, we used a portrait picture for our example.Ĭhoose a black and white photo that you’ve always wanted to have or see in color (or use the one we used by downloading it above), and open the image with Photoshop so you can jump right in and colorize a black and white photo. This is our preferred method, as it means that none of the adjustments you make are destructible, and you can always come back and make changes to the image and its colors later.
#BLACK AND WHITE PICTURES HOW TO#
While there is a range of methods that can be used to do this, we’re going to show you how to use solid color fill layers with layer masks and different blend modes. It will generally take you around 30 minutes to colorize (add color to) a black and white photo, but as you get used to the process described in this tutorial, you shouldn’t need more than 10-15 minutes. How long does it take to colorize a black and white photo? Using Photoshop to add colors to your images – Final thoughts.How to colorize black and white photos without Photoshop.Correct edges where color has bled onto the subject.Change the blend mode from ‘normal’ to ‘overlay’.Create a new solid color layer from the selection.Using the ‘Quick Selection’ tool, select the background.
How long does it take to colorize a black and white photo?.