Rick Baker
07-21-2005, 07:51 PM
http://www.rickbakerimages.com/photography_advice/coloring_black_and_white_photos.html
This step by step tutorial will show you how you can hand color your black and white photos. Have you ever wanted to take a black and white photo and make it look the way you want it to look instead of the way the image looks in real life? Would you like to learn how to color a part of a black and white photograph, while leaving the rest in black and white, to emphasize it? By the end of this tutorial, you will know how to!
First of all, you need a black and white photograph. You can scan it in, get it from your digital camera, whatever. If you have a color photograph that you want to turn black and white and you don't know how, read this tutorial and then come back.
Turning a Color Photo into Black and White in Photoshop
Make sure the image is in "RGB Color" Mode. It may already be, but it may be in Grayscale and in order for you to colorize the image at all, it has to be in "RGB Color" Mode. You can change the image mode to "RGB Color" by going to the "Image" menu, selecting "Mode" and sliding over and down and selecting "RGB Color."
It's good to separate each part of the image into layers. If you didn't already know, layers are like clear sheets of acetate, with different parts of a drawing stacked on top of each other, animators used to use. Layers allow you to do some pretty powerful things in Photoshop. Create a new layer by clicking on the "Create a new layer" icon on the bottom of the "Layers" palette. It kind of looks like a turned page, second from the right. Or you can just use the keyboard shortcut, "Shift+Ctrl+N."
Change the blending mode of the new layer to "Color". This allows us to apply color without losing the shades of gray. To change the blending mode, go to the blending mode field near the top of the "Layers" palette and click on the down arrow and scroll down near the bottom and select "Color."
Reduce the opacity of the layer to 50%. You can do this by going to the "Opacity" field near the top of the "Layers" palette, clicking on the down arrow and dragging the slider left to 50%.
I am going to change the foreground color to red by first double-clicking on the foreground swatch and picking a shade of red.
Select the "Brush" tool by clicking on the brush icon in the toolbar, 4th one down on the right or just press the "B" key.
With the "Brush" tool selected, go up to the info bar and click on the down arrow in the "Brush" field and select a brush. A soft, round brush will do fine.
We can start painting now. I'll paint "The Mittens" red.
I'm done painting "The Mittens", so I'll move on to painting something else.
Create a new layer and set the blending mode to "Color" and the opacity to 50%. I'm separating different parts of the image into different layers. Remember that anything on top will show up over layers below it, but it really doesn't matter in this exercise, since we are dividing up different areas into different layers. Every layer contains a separate piece of the image.
I'm going to select a shade of blue for the sky.
I'm done painting the sky blue.
I'll create another layer for the ground and set the blending mode to "Color" and opacity to 50%.
I think I'll paint the ground brown, even though the soil is really reddish like "The Mittens", so I'll select a brownish color from the "Color Picker."
I'm done painting the ground.
I'll create another layer for the clouds, set the blending mode to "Color" and opacity to 50%.
I'll pick an off white color from the "Color Picker" for the clouds.
I'm done painting the clouds.
You can make adjustments to the color in each layer. First you need to select everything in the layer by "Ctrl-clicking" on the layer icon of the layer. The layer icon is a scaled down image representation of the layer. It is the icon to the right of the eye and the left of the layer name. It just looks like a scaled down version of what's in that layer. Hold down the "Ctrl" button on your keyboard and left click the layer icon. You will know that you have selected everything in the layer if you see a selection marquee(marching ants) around the part of the image that is in the layer. See how "The Mittens" is surrounded in a selection marquee in the screen shot below? That's because I "Ctrl-clicked" the layer icon with "The Mittens" coloring in it. You can hide the marching ants, but keep the selection, by hitting "Ctrl-H." This is helpful when you make adjustments and don't want to see the marching ants. You can press "Ctrl-H" to un hide it.
With "The Mittens" layer selected, I am going to first try the "Brightness/Contrast" tool to see if I can improve the color by adjusting the Brightness and Contrast. I can access this tool by going to the "Image" menu, scrolling down to "Adjustments" and sliding over and down to "Brightness/Contrast."
I'll adjust the "Brightness" and "Contrast" until I'm happy and then click "OK."
Next, I'll play with the "Hue" and "Saturation" values. I can access the "Hue/Saturation" tool by going to the "Image" menu, scrolling down to "Adjustments" and scrolling over and down to "Hue/Saturation."
The "Hue/Saturation" dialog box pops up and, by adjusting the "Hue" and "Saturation", I get a color closer to what "The Mittens" really look like.
You don't have to color everything in a black and white photo and maybe that isn't your goal.
The main subject of the photo can be the only part colorized for emphasis.
Experiment with different blending modes, like "Multiply", "Soft Light", etc. and different levels of opacity until you get something you like. The "Color" blending mode and 50% opacity works best for me in most situations. You can name the layers something else than "Layer 1", "Layer 2", etc., by double-clicking on the "Layer Name" and typing in what you want to call it. I could have given each layer a more descriptive name like "Sky" or "Clouds" etc. If you have a project with a bunch of layers, descriptive name become invaluable.
Article by Rick and Jeremy Baker
This step by step tutorial will show you how you can hand color your black and white photos. Have you ever wanted to take a black and white photo and make it look the way you want it to look instead of the way the image looks in real life? Would you like to learn how to color a part of a black and white photograph, while leaving the rest in black and white, to emphasize it? By the end of this tutorial, you will know how to!
First of all, you need a black and white photograph. You can scan it in, get it from your digital camera, whatever. If you have a color photograph that you want to turn black and white and you don't know how, read this tutorial and then come back.
Turning a Color Photo into Black and White in Photoshop
Make sure the image is in "RGB Color" Mode. It may already be, but it may be in Grayscale and in order for you to colorize the image at all, it has to be in "RGB Color" Mode. You can change the image mode to "RGB Color" by going to the "Image" menu, selecting "Mode" and sliding over and down and selecting "RGB Color."
It's good to separate each part of the image into layers. If you didn't already know, layers are like clear sheets of acetate, with different parts of a drawing stacked on top of each other, animators used to use. Layers allow you to do some pretty powerful things in Photoshop. Create a new layer by clicking on the "Create a new layer" icon on the bottom of the "Layers" palette. It kind of looks like a turned page, second from the right. Or you can just use the keyboard shortcut, "Shift+Ctrl+N."
Change the blending mode of the new layer to "Color". This allows us to apply color without losing the shades of gray. To change the blending mode, go to the blending mode field near the top of the "Layers" palette and click on the down arrow and scroll down near the bottom and select "Color."
Reduce the opacity of the layer to 50%. You can do this by going to the "Opacity" field near the top of the "Layers" palette, clicking on the down arrow and dragging the slider left to 50%.
I am going to change the foreground color to red by first double-clicking on the foreground swatch and picking a shade of red.
Select the "Brush" tool by clicking on the brush icon in the toolbar, 4th one down on the right or just press the "B" key.
With the "Brush" tool selected, go up to the info bar and click on the down arrow in the "Brush" field and select a brush. A soft, round brush will do fine.
We can start painting now. I'll paint "The Mittens" red.
I'm done painting "The Mittens", so I'll move on to painting something else.
Create a new layer and set the blending mode to "Color" and the opacity to 50%. I'm separating different parts of the image into different layers. Remember that anything on top will show up over layers below it, but it really doesn't matter in this exercise, since we are dividing up different areas into different layers. Every layer contains a separate piece of the image.
I'm going to select a shade of blue for the sky.
I'm done painting the sky blue.
I'll create another layer for the ground and set the blending mode to "Color" and opacity to 50%.
I think I'll paint the ground brown, even though the soil is really reddish like "The Mittens", so I'll select a brownish color from the "Color Picker."
I'm done painting the ground.
I'll create another layer for the clouds, set the blending mode to "Color" and opacity to 50%.
I'll pick an off white color from the "Color Picker" for the clouds.
I'm done painting the clouds.
You can make adjustments to the color in each layer. First you need to select everything in the layer by "Ctrl-clicking" on the layer icon of the layer. The layer icon is a scaled down image representation of the layer. It is the icon to the right of the eye and the left of the layer name. It just looks like a scaled down version of what's in that layer. Hold down the "Ctrl" button on your keyboard and left click the layer icon. You will know that you have selected everything in the layer if you see a selection marquee(marching ants) around the part of the image that is in the layer. See how "The Mittens" is surrounded in a selection marquee in the screen shot below? That's because I "Ctrl-clicked" the layer icon with "The Mittens" coloring in it. You can hide the marching ants, but keep the selection, by hitting "Ctrl-H." This is helpful when you make adjustments and don't want to see the marching ants. You can press "Ctrl-H" to un hide it.
With "The Mittens" layer selected, I am going to first try the "Brightness/Contrast" tool to see if I can improve the color by adjusting the Brightness and Contrast. I can access this tool by going to the "Image" menu, scrolling down to "Adjustments" and sliding over and down to "Brightness/Contrast."
I'll adjust the "Brightness" and "Contrast" until I'm happy and then click "OK."
Next, I'll play with the "Hue" and "Saturation" values. I can access the "Hue/Saturation" tool by going to the "Image" menu, scrolling down to "Adjustments" and scrolling over and down to "Hue/Saturation."
The "Hue/Saturation" dialog box pops up and, by adjusting the "Hue" and "Saturation", I get a color closer to what "The Mittens" really look like.
You don't have to color everything in a black and white photo and maybe that isn't your goal.
The main subject of the photo can be the only part colorized for emphasis.
Experiment with different blending modes, like "Multiply", "Soft Light", etc. and different levels of opacity until you get something you like. The "Color" blending mode and 50% opacity works best for me in most situations. You can name the layers something else than "Layer 1", "Layer 2", etc., by double-clicking on the "Layer Name" and typing in what you want to call it. I could have given each layer a more descriptive name like "Sky" or "Clouds" etc. If you have a project with a bunch of layers, descriptive name become invaluable.
Article by Rick and Jeremy Baker