Friday 21 December 2012

Color Black and White pictures (alternative method)


Here is part two with another way on how to color your black and white portraits. It won't be a long post as the method is very simple and straight forward. The coloring can be achieved within seconds and the effect does what its supposed to.

Nothing much left to say, so let's get started

This is the portrait that I am going to use as an example in this tutorial :




1.) Open the picture in Photoshop

2.) Duplicate the background layer and leave the background locked as a backup copy. 



3.) Create a selection with your favorite selection tool. I'll go ahead and will be using the Polygonal Lasso tool this time just to show a little variety.

4.) Once you got a part or an object selected, go to Image > Adjustments...> „Hue/Saturation....“

5.) In the small window that pops up you wanna go ahead and check Colorize and now you can play around with the 3 sliders to mix a color that matches your selected object.


6.) As you can see in the above example it automatically colors her teeth red as well. That's no problem : Hit the "Ok" Button to apply the coloring, select the Eraser Tool (E) and erase the red color from her teeth. This is why we have created a duplicate of the background layer. 

7.) And that's the basic procedure already. Repeat step 2-5 until you have colored the whole picture.
It is very easy to accomplish but needs some time until you have all the different segments colored.






Optional way for people with tablets/drawpads : 

This is what I like to use : Do the whole coloring with the brush tool.

To do so create a new blank layer on top of your black and white background image and set the layer mode to „Color“. 



Now all that is left is to pick a color via the color picker and start painting with your brush. I am in favor of this method as I am using a Wacom Bamboo drawing pad and it is the most comfortable for me.