Colorize a Black and White Photo

Quick reference

• 00:05 Hey everyone. I'm certainly one to appreciate a black and white photo from
• 00:08 time to time.
• 00:09 But sometimes it just need a splash of color. Let's go ahead and colorize a
• 00:13 black and white photo.
• 00:14 In Photoshop, the process of turning a black and white photo into color can be
• 00:19 a little bit tricky,
• 00:20 depending on the photo that you are working with. The adding color part is actually
• 00:24 quite simple,
• 00:24 the tricky part is the selection process. Without any color, the objects have a
• 00:29 tendency to blend in with each other.
• 00:31 This tutorial is meant to demonstrate the process
• 00:34 of adding color to a black and white photo. While the image I chose to use is a fairly
• 00:38 simple example,
• 00:39 this method will work on most black and white photos. Now, the one thing I always
• 00:43 do when I'm converting a black and white photo to color
• 00:45 is to convert it to a CMYK image. This will give me a little bit more control
• 00:50 over my colors,
• 00:50 and I've found that I have gotten better results using a CMYK image.
• 00:54 To do that, head up to the Image menu, down to mode and then choose ‘CMYK color’.
• 00:57 Now the fun begins.
• 01:01 Your task at this point is to create a selection of color that doesn't exist.
• 01:05 Whether it's the sky, the grass, or a shirt,
• 01:08 you need to use your imagination and knowledge of the world
• 01:11 to determine which objects have color, where they start, and where they end.
• 01:15 It can be a little bit tricky. Photoshop includes a variety of
• 01:19 selection methods that you can use during this step.
• 01:21 For a reserve of similar shade, the Quick Selection tool may work quite well.
• 01:25 Otherwise, try out the Lasso tools or the Pen tool. Those will help with the hard
• 01:29 to get areas.
• 01:30 Using my Quick Selection tool, all I'm going to do is drag my mouse
• 01:34 over top of the sky, which is nicely divided by the trees.
• 01:37 That should give me a pretty nice selection. Once the initial selection has been
• 01:41 made, it may be a good idea to refine its edges, especially if you're dealing
• 01:43 with hair or trees. Under the Select menu at the
• 01:47 top, Photoshop’s refine edge feature
• 01:48 is fantastic for dealing with those rough edges,
• 01:52 like trees and hair.
• 01:52 To see exactly what I'm dealing with, I'm going to select the
• 01:56 ’black-and-white view’ mode
• 01:57 and then I'm going to turn on ‘smart radius’ and crank my radius up to around 20 pixels.
• 02:02 This will tell Photoshop to get in those little crevices that you really can’t get
• 02:06 in with standard selection tools.
• 02:07 Now, when you accept your new selection, it's time to add color.
• 02:11 We're going to be using a curves adjustment layer, as it allows us to
• 02:14 individually edit each channel.
• 02:16 And by using adjustment layers, we’re able to edit the adjustment at a later time
• 02:20 if needed.
• 02:20 In your layers panel, click on the ‘adjustment layer’ icon at the bottom,
• 02:24 and then select curves. Because we had an active selection already,
• 02:28 your curves adjustment layer will automatically add a layer mask
• 02:31 that reflects that selection. Your properties panel above,
• 02:34 or you're adjustments panel in an earlier version of Photoshop, will
• 02:37 update to show the curves adjustment, where you can choose any of the channels to edit.
• 02:41 Each object in your image will require a different combination of curve adjustments.
• 02:46 For example, if I wanted a nice blue sky, I would probably start my cyan channel
• 02:50 and drag the curve up into the left just a little bit.
• 02:55 And then I would hop into my yellow channel
• 02:56 and drag the curve down into the right quite a bit more.
• 02:59 And that will give me a nice blue sky. At this point, I'm not going to go through the
• 03:03 process all over again,
• 03:04 so what I do is save my selections as channels.
• 03:07 So here we have the tree selection. What I'm going to do is, again, I can add a curves
• 03:12 adjustment layer.
• 03:13 Now to get the green in the trees, I'm going to start my cyan channel again,
• 03:17 bring it up and to the left just a bit. I'm going to keep the magenta the same.
• 03:21 And in the yellow, I'm going to go up into the left a little bit.
• 03:24 That'll give me some nice green trees.
• 03:26 And finally, let me load in my field selection, and let's add one more curves
• 03:30 adjustment layer.
• 03:31 For this one, in cyan, I'll drag it down to the right a little bit.
• 03:35 Magenta is going to be a little bit up. And the yellow I'm going to drag up as well.
• 03:39 Once all the curve adjustments are in
• 03:42 you should have a nice looking result. But to really drive it home,
• 03:45 what I like to do is I like to add a hue and saturation adjustment layer as well.
• 03:49 Once this adjustment layer's been added, I'm going to crank the saturation up to give
• 03:53 some nice color to the image.
• 03:54 And finally, adding another curves adjustment layer to the whole image
• 03:58 should help sharpen up the final result.

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