In this tutorial I'm gonna be covering one method on how to color black and white pictures.
As always, thanks to the huge diversity
that Photoshop offers there are multiple ways on how to achieve the
coloring. I will only cover one of them right here. A different way can be found here : coming soon
The basic idea that comes with every BW-picture that you want to colorize is that you create a
selection of an object or a certain part of the picture and then you do the magic on the
Let's get started :
1.) Open a Black and White picture of
your choice in Photoshop.
I'm gonna be using the following
picture as an example
2.) For better color results with this
method I recommend you to change the image color mode to CMYK Color
by navigating to „Image > Mode > CMYK Color“
3.) Now there are several ways to create
a selection in Photoshop. For this method I prefere going with the
Quick Selection Tool (W).
Tip : When you use the Quick Selection Tool you can hold the ALT-Key while clicking to exclude certain parts from your selection without having to create a new selection all over.
4.) Basically, for every object in the
picture you need a seperate selection. So let's say you want to color
the sky in blue. You select it with your prefered selection method.
5.) When that's set-up, go to your layers
palette and click on „Create a new fill or adjustment layer“
and select „Curves...“ from it.
6.) Now you will get a new layer and you
can play around with the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and the Black Curves
to achieve whatever color you want. This means that for each object
you will have a separate layer which comes in very handy if you need
to edit/erase something.
7.) Repeat those steps and color your
black & white image bit by bit.
That's it for now. The next post will cover another method on how to color black-and-white pictures.
I'm very open for criticism so make sure you drop a comment in the comment section below if you got any questions left or you want me to explain something a little more detailed.
Until next time, see you !
