Digitally Hand-Coloring Black & White Photos

by Carl Volk

Hand-coloring black and white photos has been an art in itself for a long time. Having done some myself the traditional way (using Marshall's transparent oil paints on a fiber paper print), I've experienced how painstakingly tedious this process can be. Well now, with Photoshop, it's a lot easier.

The original gray scale scan of the ballerina pictured in the upper left corner first has to have Levels adjusted then the backdrop material in the foreground is re-touched (cloned) with the Rubber Stamp tool. After doing an unsharp masking while in Grey Scale Mode, the image is then turned into RGB Mode (which triples the file size). Select a "burnt" orange Foreground Color (15% Cyan, 70% Magenta, 95% Yellow, 7% Black or similar) with the Color Picker. Go to Fill Command under Edit Menu and select Foreground Color in Contents, make the Opacity 20% and use Color for the Mode choice. Color mode merely tints the existing density, allowing all the details to remain entact. Now you have a sepia-toned image as shown in the upper right picture.*

To achieve a fully hand-colored effect like the lower picture shown can be done using the same principles stated above. Selection of the areas to colorize becomes the chore now. The light blue dress of the ballerina was carefully outlined with the Lasso tool with one pixel feathering. A light blue foreground color was selected and a Fill was performed, with the Opacity set at 25% and Color for the Mode. The lips, hair, eyes, tights, slippers and flower were all done in a similar way with the Opacity varying between 15% and 40%. Of course, the Opacity setting will be determined by the saturation of the color you select for your Foreground Color and your own desired effect. The soft rosy-colored cheeks are done with a little feathering of the selection, about 6 pixels at 200 dpi, to blend the color added to the neutral skin color of the sepia tone.

Once you have the sepia-toned image you can also change the Hue and Saturation (Control/Command U, under Image - Adjust menu) of a selected area to make it another color without having to pick a different Foreground Color. Some interesting colors can be arrived at by just adjusting the Hue - play with the choices and use minimal Saturation for softer colors. A description of how to create the vignetting in the finalized image will be the topic of a future tip so check in next month.

The glamour portrait is an example of a black and white photograph colorized using another method - via the Hue and Saturation window. In order to tint neutral tones (after taking a gray scale file into RGB mode) you must check on the Colorize box in the lower right hand corner of the H&S window. Having done that, you now have all the colors of the rainbow, represented by the Hue slider, at any amount of intensity or subtlety, represented by the Saturation slider. Leave the Lightness slider alone, please. If you want to do density adjustments do them with Levels or Curves before you colorize. Note that very light densities and dark shadow tones do not colorize well - midtones are especially affected with colorization. The H&S settings for the blue eyes color is shown in the window. The very subtle sepia tone in the black and white majority of the photo is arrived at with picking orange with the Hue slider and using a minimal Saturation of 4%.

The lower portrait is an example of a black and white image created from a color photo (and scan) by first going to LAB mode and using the Lightness channel for the gray scale version. In this case the colorized areas are actually "tints" of the color photo copied and "Pasted Into" the same areas above the black and white sepia tone. Each colorized part is a separate layer and the opacity settings have been reduced for the tinting effect. Try using the Color Mode in your choice of Layer blendings and the color of the layer will tint the B&W photo below it. The gold color of the jewelry in this example was done with this method of colorizing.

The colorized black and white photo below provides another example of that hand-colored look that is so easy to achieve in Photoshop. The real trick is to select the areas to be colorized properly. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger version.

IN MEMORY OF CARL VOLK
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>>>>Carl N. Volk<<<< April 8, 1953 - September 5, 2000

Carl's art, talents and teachings will live on for all of us to enjoy.
Visit: http://www.carlvolk.com (Starting Friday, October 27)