Colorizing Black-and-White Images in Photoshop

Just as there are valid artistic reasons for shooting a photo in black and white, there are equally reasonable rationales for changing a grayscale image into a color one. Perhaps the picture is an old one, taken before color film was widely used, and you’d like to colorize it. Or you may come across a monochrome image that would look even better in color. Photoshop lets you restore black-and-white pictures to their original colors or create whole new color schemes. If you can imagine an image in color, use Photoshop to add the hues you want to see.

1. Open a grayscale image in Photoshop.
2. Choose Image➪Mode➪RGB Color to convert the grayscale image to a full color image (even though it presently still lacks any color).
3. Choose Layer➪New Layer.
This creates a new transparent layer to paint on. Although you can paint directly on an image layer or a copy of an image layer, using an empty layer is safer and gives you more flexibility in backtracking when you make a mistake.
The New Layer dialog box appears.
4. Name the layer.
Although you can paint all your colors on a single layer, you’ll find that using a separate layer for each part of the face lets you fade that color in and out as required to blend smoothly with your other hues.
5. Select the Color mode from the Modes drop-down list in the Layers palette.
Photoshop uses this blending mode to combine the painting layer with the image layer underneath, enabling you to apply color while retaining all the tones and details of the underlying grayscale image.
6. Select a color you want to apply from the Swatches palette.
If you don’t find the exact color you want, you can also use the Color palette to mix your own.
7. Press B to activate the Brush tool.
You may have to press Shift+B to cycle to the Brush tool if the Pencil was used last.
8. Click the down arrow next to the Brush Preset picker in the Options bar and choose a brush from the array.
Hard-edged brushes appear first and the soft-edged brushes follow. You might want to start with a 9- or 13-pixel-wide soft-edged brush. If you’re already comfortable with the Brush tool, you can choose the Airbrush option in the Options bar to get a very subtle and soft effect. Just be sure you pick the kind of brush that works best for the area of the picture you’re colorizing. (Use a small, fuzzy brush for smaller areas, and use a bigger, sharper brush for more stark lines and wider areas.)
9. Paint over all the parts of the image that contain that color.
If you make a mistake, you can erase the bad strokes without affecting the underlying grayscale image because you’re painting on a separate transparent layer. Change brushes as necessary by clicking the Brush Preset picker in the Options bar and choosing a larger or smaller brush. You can also make your brush larger or smaller one size at a time by pressing the [ and ] keys (the left and right bracket keys) on your keyboard.
10. When you’ve finished with that area of the image, create a new layer for each of the main components of the photograph and repeat Steps 4 through 8 with an additional color.
Creating natural, subtle effects with people’s skin, hair, and eyes takes a special touch:
- Eyes: When painting the eyes, paint only the irises and leave the pupils their original black color. Don’t paint over the catchlights in the eyes, either. (Catchlights are reflections of light sources, such as windows or the flash that made the picture.)
- Lips: Color the inner surface of the lips a darker, rosier pink than the outer surface. Lips look best when portrayed in at least two shades. Don’t forget to color the gums with an even lighter pink.
- Hair: Hair looks best when the highlights and darker portions are slightly different colors.
- Skin tone: For the overall skin tone, I chose a different technique using the Hue/Saturation command. To put a little blush in the cheeks, choose the Airbrush option from the Options bar and work with a relatively large brush size. Apply a good dash of color to each cheek, and a lighter bit of color to the forehead and chin. Be sure to pick a color that’s as close to real life as possible. If the subject has darker skin, you may need to move away from rosier blush tones.
11. When you’re finished coloring your layers, you can experiment with different opacity levels for each colorized layer to see if more transparent hues might look better.